


LIBRARY OF CX)NGRESS 



DDDD5b3flfl47 




^'"""^'ijTTLE GEORGE RODE TO SCHOOL ON HIS PONY. 



The Story of 
Young George Washington 



By 
WAYNE WHIPPLE 

Author of The Story of the American Flag, The Story of the 

Liberty Bell, The Story of the White House, The Story 

of Young Benjamin Franklin, The Story of 

Young Abraham Lincoln, etc. 



Illustrated 



PHILADELPHIA 

HENRY ALTEMUS COMPANY 



COPYBIGHT, 1915, BY HoWARD E. AlTEMUS 



Jul S3 1SI5 



OCI.A 400717 



if 



^ /. 



CONTENTS 

Chapter Page 
Introduction 9 

I. "Washington's Fighting Ancestors 19 

II. The Little Boy Washington 24 

III. The Big Boy Washington 48 

IV. Going to Live at Augustine's 60 

V. The Fairfax Family 80 

VI. George's First Survey and Journal 93 

VII. A Boy no Longer 102 

VIII. Young Major Washington 114 

IX. The Ohio Company^s Troubles With the French 

AND Indians 124 

X. Young Washington Goes on a Dangerous Errand . . 134 

XL Young Washington's Two Hairbreadth Escapes. . .145 

XII. Major Washington's First Battle 157 

XIII. Washington's Terrible Experience With an Eng- 

lish General 170 

XIV. Settling Two Important Qt^stions for Life 181 

Appendix 193 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

Page 

Little George Rode to School on His Pont Frontispiece 

Breaking a Fiery Colt Facing 54 

Young Washington and His Mother " 76 

Young Washington Reports to His Employer, 

Lord Fairfax " 104 

Young Washington Starts on a Dangerous Errand " 128 

Young Washington Disarming the Indian " 152 

Young Washington Rallies Braddock's Troops... " 176 
Young Washington's Wedding Journey " 188 



THE STORY OF 
YOUNG GEORGE WASHINGTON 



INTRODUCTION 



The Real Washington, Boy and Man 



'^I AM not surprised at what George has done, 
for he was always a good boy,^' is the remark 
that General Washington's mother made when 
she was told that her ''boy" had been elected 
the first President of the United States. Al- 
though he was the greatest man in America, and 
one of the grandest men that ever lived ; George 
Washington was always her "boy." It is as a 
boy — for he was "a real boy" — and as a kind, 
unselfish, brave, true man, that we are to con- 
sider him. 

This is not easy to do, because most people 
have mistaken ideas about Washington. Those 
who knew him best, and could have told just 
what he did and said, were possessed of strange 
notions as to what ought to be told about him. 

So, instead of letting others see him as he 
really was, they managed to keep people from 

9 



Introduction 

knowing the true George Washington. They 
tried hard to make him ''show of£" like a hero, 
instead of telling simply what he did and how 
he did it, so that everybody could see what a 
hero he was. In their vain attempts to make 
him appear more than human, they did not show 
him to have been the live, warm-hearted man he 
was. It was almost as if they had patted and 
packed together a snow man and set it up, put- 
ting an old sword in its clumsy, cold hand, and 
exclaimed : 

''Behold General George Washington!'' 

To make him talk and act "big" all the time, 
as a demi-god or a fabled hero, like Hercules or 
Alexander the Great, they succeeded only in 
making him behave like an ridiculous little prig, 
as a boy, and appear pompous and self -conceited 
after he grew up. The author of the first life of 
Washington for young people was a wandering 
preacher named Weems. It was he who first 
told about little George and his hatchet. He 
made the story sound quite silly because of the 
high-flown preachments he put into the mouths 
of little George and his "Pa." But this was not 

10 



Introduction 

entirely Mr. Weems's fault. In the best books 
for children of that time, written by Maria 
Edgeworth, Jane Taylor, and others, even down 
to fifty years after Washington's day, the 
fathers, tutors, and ^* Uncle Georges" were 
always "lecturing" the unnatural children 
under their charge. Yet boys and girls — and 
their older relatives, too — eagerly read those 
highly moral and entertaining tales for *Hhe 
young," and pronounced them "instructive and 
edifjdng." 

Indeed, the eccentric parson was not the only 
offender, in this respect, against the Father of 
his Country, for Washington's namesake and 
adopted son, George Washington Parke Custis, 
seemed sometimes to be trying too hard to make 
his immortal step-grandfather show off like a 
hero. His story of the boy Washington break- 
ing a certain colt sounds, if possible, even more 
foolish that Mr. Weems's account of little 
George and his little hatchet. In Mr. Custis 's 
description the sorrel colt is referred to as a 
"steed," a "courser," with other "heroic" 
phrases, and the story sounds as if the writer 
had tried to make his foster father outshine 
young Alexander the Great in taming the fabu- 

11 



Introduction 

lous horse, Bucephalus, as described by Plu- 
tarch. 

You shall read this story of George's des- 
perate ride on an unbroken horse, and several 
of Mr. Weems's moral tales in "The Story of 
Young George Washington," and decide for 
yourselves whether a boy would ever use such 
absurd language in talking with his father or 
mother. A few of these stilted stories will show 
also what our parents and grandparents en- 
joyed when there was nothing better to read. 
And those old-fashioned tales may help explain 
how such mistaken ideas of Washington began 
to prevail. 

Still others besides inexperienced writers of 
children's stories and personal recollections are 
at fault for spreading wrong impressions of 
Washington. An eminent historian, the Rev. 
Dr. Jared Sparks, president of Harvard Col- 
lege, spent many years in painstaking research, 
collecting Washington's letters, journals, 
speeches, accounts, and so forth, and published 
them, in twelve exhaustive volumes, as "The 
Writings of Washington." But whenever Dr. 
Sparks thought he could improve on what was 
actually written, he deemed it his duty to change 

12 



Introduction 

the words of Washington so they would sound 
better. Then he published his ''Writings of 
Washington" without explaining that they were 
erased, corrected and improved, as if Wash- 
ington were a schoolboy and Dr. Sparks his 
teacher, printing only what he thought his pupil 
ought to have written! 

But that teacher did all this with the best in- 
tentions : he meant to give people only what was 
''good for them." For instance, wherever 
Washington referred to General Putnam as 
"Old Put," as that doughty general was called 
by everybody, Dr. Sparks changed it to the more 
respectful title; and once, on receiving a very 
small sum of money for a very large outlay, 
Washington wrote that the extremely small 
amount was "but a flea-bite at present," and 
Dr. Sparks changed this to read that the 
amount was "totally inadequate to our demands 
at this time!" 

Of course, "Old Put" and "flea-bite" do not 
sound very elegant, but Washington was so 
dignified as a rule, that it is a relief to know 
that he could unbend and say things that prove 
that he was much more like Abraham Lincoln 
than people imagine. Although none of these 

13 



Introduction 

little changes seem very important, yet in read- 
ing the *' Writings of Washington" you are 
never quite certain whether the passage before 
you was written by Washington or by Sparks, 
and you have no means of knowing, for his- 
torians who have gone quite deep into the mat- 
ter say that Dr. Sparks actually burned some 
of Washington's precious original letters and 
manuscripts ! 

It is very hard to believe that so great a his- 
torian as good Dr. Sparks really was could 
have done anything so reckless. If he did it he 
was like the little boy who wrote to hundreds 
of people asking for their autographs, and after 
he had made a large collection, he carefully 
copied them all into an autograph album, in his 
own neat handwriting — then he burned the 
original signatures! But there was more ex- 
cuse for such thoughtlessness in an ignorant 
boy. 

Therefore, the strange parson was not the 
only writer to spread mistaken notions about 
the Father of his Country. Weems's story 
about George and the cherry tree is more widely 
known than anything Washington ever did as 
Commander-in-chief, or President of the United 

14 



Introduction 

States. His book, queer as it sounds to us now, 
was read by many thousands of people who 
never would have had the patience to go through 
the dry, long-drawn-out lives of Washington 
that were written at that time. So Mr. Weems 
did his country a great service. 

A recent French traveler, after visiting 
America, published a book in which he stated 
that young Americans have a deeper regard for 
truth than the children of any other nation in 
the world, because of the story of little George 
Washington, the boy who '* could not tell a lie.'' 

The book would have done no end of good if 
it had been read by no one else in the world but 
a certain tall, lank youth, named Abraham 
Lincoln — a brave young pioneer, in many re- 
spects like George Washington himself — though 
**Abe" did not know it. Lying on the floor be- 
fore the open fire nearly all night, young Lin- 
coln read till he was too sleepy to keep his eyes 
open any longer, then he put the book in a 
chink between the logs of the cabin where he 
could reach for it the first thing on waking. 

It was to this book that President-elect Lin- 
coln referred in an address in the New Jersey 
State House, while on his way to Washington 

15 



Introduction 

to take the helm of the Ship of State. Presi- 
dent Lincohi used to tell his friends that nearly 
all the history he knew he had learned from a 
set of biographies written for young people. 
Nothing can interest and inspire the heart of 
youth like the real life-story of a hero. 

Abraham Lincoln has given the world an ob- 
ject lesson in real heroes. In his barren, homely 
life he manifested the heroism of the heart. 
There is where all heroism begins — and never 
ends — whether illustrated by Chevalier Bayard, 
that knight "without fear and without re- 
proach;" or by the martyr or patriot who gives 
his life for religion or country; or by a Wash- 
ington or Lincoln who, risking all, giving all, 
lays his life and fortunes upon the altar of his 
country. 

George Washington, like Abraham Lincoln, 
began by showing his deep love for family, 
friends, and neighbors. He was faithful 
"through thick and thin," sometimes after he 
had been hurt to the heart by rank injustice and 
treachery. 

To misrepresent his inner life and pure 
motives is the greatest harm that can be done 
to the memory of George Washington. In this 

16 



Introduction 

he has been ^^hurt in the house of his friends," 
who persisted in making him appear pompous, 
"distant," and otherwise ridiculous. 

George Washington had the true heroism of 
the heart and home before he could become the 
leading patriot of his country — the first of many 
heroes — and one of the greatest in the whole 
history of the world. He was heroic all the time 
— not merely while on horseback brandishing 
a sword. While he was a general he used the 
spade, the ax, and the crowbar much more than 
the sword. 

''The Story of Young George Washington" 
tells especially of Washington's boyhood and 
youth, and of the causes and conditions under 
which his heroic heart began to express itself in 
his marvelous career. It is the story of the ax 
and the spade, as well as the sword. The stories 
here given are to reveal his great, passionate 
heart. 

''He was always a good boy," as his mother 
said. He was a dutiful and devoted son, a kind 
brother, an indulgent step-father and uncle (he 
never had any children of his own), and a loyal, 
long-suffering friend. Instead of being cold, 
like a statue of marble, he had warm, red blood 

17 

2 — Washington. 



Introduction 

coursing in his veins. This is not a history of 
the General or the President; it is a life of 
George as well as of Washington. 

Wayne Whipple. 



18 



V 



THE STORY OP 
YOUNG GEORGE WASHINGTON 



CHAPTER I 



Washington's Fighting Ancestors 



JOHN BALL, 1381 AND 1781 

George Washington had plenty of fighting 
blood in his veins. His mother, Mary Ball 
Washington, was descended from John Ball, 
who, over one hundred years before Columbus 
discovered America, went about England on 
horseback, preaching that all men are free and 
equal. It was he who originated this quaint 
couplet, which he often took for his text: 

**When Adam delved and Eve span. 
Who was then the gentleman?" 

The poor people were delighted to hear that 
they were just as good as their *' betters," and 
crowded around the ''crazy preacher of Kent," 

19 



The Story of Young 

as John Ball was called. But they broke out in 
a small rebellion led by Wat, the Tyler, or 
roofer, against their young king, Richard the 
Second, and his nobles. 

In those days a man was called crazy if he 
talked about liberty and equality, and John Ball 
paid for his rashness with his life. If the mad 
preacher, on the scaffold in 1381, could have 
looked forw^ard four hundred years, he would 
have beheld a sight to gladden his liberty-lov- 
ing eyes. For, on the then unknown "Western 
Continent, in 1781, at Yorktown, he would have 
seen George Washington, his grandson of 
about the twentieth generation, finishing the 
fight which he, John Ball, had so bravely begun. 
For the brave priest was beheaded because he 
claimed to believe in the sublime doctrine 
stated in the Declaration of Independence : 

^'That all men are created equal; 
that they are endowed by their Creator 
with certain inalienable rights; that 
among these are life, liberty, and the 
pursuit of happiness." 

John Ball was Washington's greatest fight- 
ing ancestor on his mother's side. George was 

20 



George Washington 

said to resemble his mother in face and tem- 
perament, and in solid, homely common-sense. 
Very little is really kno^vn about Mary Ball 
Washington; nearl}'- everj^thing that is told of 
her is inferred from the fact that she was the 
mother of her illustrious son. No doubt she 
was a beautiful girl, *'the belle of Northern 
Neck" (that part of Virginia, lying between 
the Potomac and the Rappahannock Rivers), 
when she was married to Captain Augustine 
Washington, then a widower with two sons liv- 
ing. She was known in after life as a woman 
of strong will and temper, of strict integrity, 
of sterling character, and of few words. 

WILLIAM DE WESSYNGTON TO COLONEL JOHN 
WASHINGTON 

On his father's side the family name is recog- 
nized four centuries farther back than the time 
of reckless John Ball. In the English records 
a reference is made to a grant of land from 
Edgar, the Saxon king, to Athelunold Was- 
sengatone, in 963 A. D. Over a hundred years 
after this, William the Conqueror, rewarding 
his valiant knights for helj^ing him vanquish 

21 



The Story of Young 

the Saxons, gave an estate in England to Will- 
iam de Hertburn, whose descendant of the same 
name was, in 1183, in possession of the manor 
and village of Wessyngton, in the County of 
Durham. 

As was the custom, the family took the name 
of its estate or village, and William de Hert- 
burn was known as William de Wessyngton. 
The ''de'^ was soon dropped and Wessyngton 
was pronounced and spelled, down through the 
centuries, Wessington, Weshington, Wassing- 
ton, until it became Washington. The names of 
these knightly descendants of the Norman con- 
querors, in their various forms, are found in 
the lists of English chivalry all through the 
Middle Ages, and many of them engaged in 
heroic enterprises to be eclipsed only by one 
great American name which should evermore 
be *' first in war.'* 

Lawrence Washington, founder of the branch 
of the family that came to America, was for 
years mayor of Northampton, and purchased, in 
1538, the manor of Sulgrave, Northamptonshire, 
England, from Henry the Eighth, out of a lot 
of confiscated church property. This estate 
came to be known as ^'Washington Manor." 

22 



George Washington 

The Washingtons were closely identified with 
the fortunes of ill-fated King Charles the First. 
Sir Henry Washington distinguished himself 
by bringing about the capture of Bristol, in 
1643, and was in command of Worcester, three 
years later, heroically holding that city after 
his ammunition was exhausted. 

The reverses that attended the fall of the 
king and the rise of Cromwell had so impov- 
erished the Washington family that they lost 
the manor at Sulgrave, and John and Lawrence, 
two ''younger sons,'' left their humbler home at 
Little Brington to seek their fortunes in a new 
country. After stopping a while at the island 
of Barbadoes, they came to Virginia in 1657, 
seven years later than William Ball, of Kent, 
England, Mary Ball's ancestor, arrived in the 
same colony. 

John Washington, a powerful young man of 
twenty-three, took up immense tracts of land on 
the Potomac, around Pope's and Bridges' 
Creeks and settled there as a tobacco planter. 
He was elected to the House of Burgesses and 
appointed a colonel of militia. In a war with 
the Indians, in 1675, Colonel John Washing- 
ton terrified the savages so that they named him 

23 



The Story of Young 

Canotocarius, "Destroyer of Villages,'* a title 
they afterward gave to George, his illustrious 
great-grandson. He died in 1677, leaving a 
great estate to his son Lawrence, who became 
the father of Captain Augustine Washington, 
who married Mary Ball, in 1730. 

So George Washington, *Hhe first American,'' 
came into the world with a rare military herit- 
age, in Church and in State, both in the Old 
World and the New. 



CHAPTER II 



The Little Boy Washington 



THE PLACE AND THE DAT 

Captain Augustine Washington brought 
Mary Ball, his beautiful young bride, home to 
*' Wakefield," his own birthplace, a sightly 
estate overlooking the Potomac. The place had 
been settled by his grandfather. Colonel John 
Washington. The house was a rather dingy old 
story-and-a-half wooden structure built on a 

24 



George Washington 

brick foundation, with four large rooms on the 
ground floor, and several small bedrooms in the 
low half -story upstairs. It had a long slanting 
roof which came nearly down to the ground at 
the back, and outside, at each end, stood a huge, 
high chimney. 

The little house was surrounded by a spacious 
garden, which sloped toward the tide-water 
river, so wdde there as to be really an arm of 
Chesapeake Bay. The grounds abounded in fig 
and other fruit trees, laurel, and wild grapes, 
honeysuckle and sweetbrier roses which clam- 
bered and clustered over stones and stumps 
along the steep river bank. ^'Wakefield" was, 
all together, a beautiful estate. 

Augustine Washington was accounted a 
wealthy man in his day. Aside from several 
plantations his father, Lawrence Washington, 
had left him, he had acquired others. He was 
an energetic man of affairs, and his various en- 
terprises seemed to have been successful. He 
became a leading member of the Principio Com- 
pany, a sort of syndicate of English adventurers, 
which operated certain iron mines in the colony. 

In connection with this he had established a 
furnace on his estate in Stafford County, and 

25 



The Story of Young 

controlled the teaming of the ore from the mines. 
He was also master of a ship which carried the 
iron to the English market; from this he re- 
ceived the title of Captain. On his return trips 
his ship came loaded with household goods and 
supplies, farm implements and tools, carriages, 
wearing apparel, and even groceries, for nearly 
everything the planters used, or wore, or ate, 
had to be brought from the Mother Country. 
Sometimes he brought back gangs of convicts, 
condemned to work for years in the mines and 
tobacco fields, instead of serving their terms in 
prison. 

The chief product of the soil of Virginia was 
tobacco. Therefore the principal occupation 
was growing, curing, and shipping tobacco, 
which Captain Washington was able to deliver 
from his own landing at "Wakefield," some- 
times in his own ship, direct to the London mar- 
ket. Tobacco was not only the staple product 
but the currency of the colony, generally used 
instead of money. A slave, a coach, a cow, or a 
gown cost so many pounds — not dollars nor 
pounds sterling, as in England, but pounds of 
tobacco! 

There were few cities in America in those 

26 



George Washington 

days. Even the greatest, Philadelphia, Boston, 
and New York, would hardly be considered 
large towns to-day. Most of the people lived in 
the country, as farmers and planters, in the fer- 
tile valleys along the navigable rivers. Their 
homes were scattered so far apart that it was 
miles, usually, to their nearest neighbors. The 
country, a few miles back from these valleys, 
was an almost unbroken wilderness, generally 
forests, inhabited by savages, or rough, venture- 
some people speaking foreign tongues, and 
nearly as wild, or rude, as the Indians them- 
selves. 

As the planters could get about in boats to 
the distant villages, or visit their neighbors, 
there were very few roads of any kind, and none 
w^ere what would be called good roads to-day. 
Yet many a family in Virginia made it a matter 
of pride and dignity to drive with an English 
*' coach and four," though their heavy carriages 
of gilt and glass lumbered and jolted over roots, 
logs and stumps, and floundered through mud- 
holes and swamps. J> 

The aristocracy of Virginia, in that day, was 
said to be the proudest in the world. Among 
the famous *' First Families of Virginia" (or 

27 



The Story of Young 

"F. F. V.'s") were the Lees, Masons, Byrds, 
Carys, and perhaps a few others. Despite the 
gentle lineage of the Washingtons, and the 
wealth and enterprise of Captain Augustine, 
they were looked upon as belonging to the 
''minor gentry," as those were called who were 
not of noble origin, but related to titled families 
in England. Besides, the Washingtons, like 
many of the planters, were ''land poor." They 
owned large estates, but had little money to 
spend for luxuries and privileges. The men 
worked on their estates with their slaves and 
convicts whose servitude made all kinds of 
manual labor seem mean and low to those de- 
scendants of English noblemen. 

As there were few good schools and colleges 
in America, Virginian youths were sent to Eng- 
land to be educated or "finished." Captain 
Washington himself had gone to school at 
Appleby, near Whitehaven, and he proposed to 
send his sons, Lawrence and young Augustine, 
to the same school as soon as they were old 
enough to take the studies and bear the long sep- 
aration. 

It was upon these strange, contrasting scenes 
that little George Washington opened his round 

28 



George "Washington 

baby eyes in that old house at ''Wakefield," 
Westmoreland County, Virginia, on the 11th or 
22d, of February, 1731, or 1732. 



"old style" and jstew 



It may be well to explain how that illustrious 
infant managed to have two birthdays, eleven 
days apart, and how he could possibly be born 
in two different years — that is, on the 11th of 
February, 1731, and the 22d of February, 1732. 
This was because the 11th of February, Old 
Style, became the 22d of February, New Style. 
According to the Julian calendar, established 
nearly two thousand years ago by Julius Caesar, 
there were three hundred and sixty-five and one- 
fourth days in a j^ear. Now every schoolboy 
knows that it takes the earth about eleven min- 
utes less than three hundred and sixty-five and 
one-fourth days to revolve around the sun, 
which makes the solar year. Therefore, every 
new year since the time of Julius Caesar really 
began over eleven minutes sooner than indicated 
by Caesar's calendar. In 1582, Pope Gregory 
XIII, finding that the Julian calendar, by fall- 
ing behind eleven minutes every year, was then 

29 



The Story of Young 

eleven days behind sun time, so he issued an 
order to the world to turn its clock eleven days 
ahead. The British Parliament did not get 
round to do this until George Washington had 
grown to be a tall young man. On the 2d of 
September, 1752, England took this step by act 
of Parliament, which ordered that the next day 
should be, not September 3d, but September 
14th, thus turning the calendar of all English- 
speaking people forward eleven days. As this 
should have been done before, everybody, reck- 
oning back to the day of Washington's birth, 
adds eleven days to the behind-hand count and 
makes it February 22d, New Style, instead of 
February 11th, Old Style. 

Now for the years, 1731 and 1732. At the 
same time with the Gregorian correction, the 
year was made to begin January 1st, instead of 
March 25th, which had been New Year's Day 
according to the Old Style. So if the New Year 
began January 1st, February came in 1732. 

If the year 1732 did not begin until March 
25th, February was counted as next to the last- 
month of 1731. This is the reason the day on 
which George Washington was born was Feb- 
ruary 11th, 1731, Old Style, or February 22d, 

30 



George Washington 

1732, according to the present way of reckoning, 
or New Style, and why Washington's birthday 
is now celebrated on the 22d of February. 

Here is a reduced fac-simile of the record of 
his birth, just as George himself wrote it, at 
the age of seventeen, in his mother's family 
Bible: 

'* George Washington, son to Augus- 
tine and Mary, his wife, was born the 
11th day of February, 1731-2, about ten 
in the morning, and was baptized the 
3d of April follomng. Mr. Beverly 
Whiting and Captain Christopher 
Brooks, Godfathers, and Mrs. Mildred 
Gregory, Godmother." 

See fac-simile, page 831, Vol. XLIII. 
The Century Magazine, 

GEORGE AND HIS FATHER 

When Baby George came into the Washing- 
ton family, Lawrence, the older brother was 
fourteen, and Austin, as young Augustine was 
called at home, was about twelve years old. 
George had but little recollection of his half- 
brothers until they came home, at di:fferent 
times, from Appleby School, in England. The 

31 



The Story of Young 

young mother, therefore, had no care of her two 
stepsons, for both were well grown by the time 
they had finished school. Lawrence did not 
come home to stay, for he had caught the fight- 
ing fever in England, and soon started off to the 
West Indies to join General Wentworth and 
Admiral Vernon to fight against the Spanish 
colonies in the West Indies and on the mainland 
of South America. 

Mary Washington had enough to do in caring 
for her own little brood. When George, her 
first born, was only sixteen months old a baby 
girl was born, whom they named Elizabeth, but 
she was always called Betty. Then, at intervals 
of two years or less, came Samuel, John Augus- 
tine, always affectionately called "Jack," and 
Charles, who was six years younger than 
George. Last of all, a wee baby sister, named 
Mildred for the aunt, Mrs. Gregory, George's 
godmother. 

The first sorrow came to George's life when 
he was eight years old, as they laid away the 
beautiful baby form of Mildred, whose span of • 
life as the pet of the household had been very 
short — only fourteen months. 

But this made the bond still closer between 

32 



George Washington 

him and his only remaining sister, big, bouncing 
Betty, who was so near his own age. Betty 
grew to be a large woman, so much resembling 
George in features that, after he became cele- 
brated, she delighted in dressing up in military 
uniform, and, it is said, she was sometimes mis- 
taken for the General himself. 

Between George and his second brother, 
**Jack,'' there existed a deep devotion, which 
the General and President continued to his 
brother's children, after *'dear brother Jack" 
had gone the way of all the earth. 

For a number of years Captain Washington, 
George's father, had been convinced that 
*' Wakefield" was not a healthful place to bring 
up a growing family. Two of the children of 
his first wife, Jane, had died in infancy and 
their mother had followed them, in 1728. 

Two years before this, though he owned other 
estates, he purchased from his sister a high and 
beautiful site, about fifty miles up the Potomac, 
then called the Hunting Creek Place, which she 
had inherited from their father. To this hill 
estate Captain Washington removed, in 1735, 
with his wife and three little children. Jack 
was "the baby" then, though they were all in- 

33 

3 — Washington. 



The Story of Young 

f ants, for George was only three. On this lovely 
height (not named Mount Vernon until about 
ten years later) the young Washington family 
spent four memorable years. Here George 
learned to know his father, whom he loved 
dearly, and whose memory he devoutly rev- 
ered. 

In the absence of the older sons. Captain 
Washington devoted all the time at his disposal 
to George. His frequent absences, on business, 
visiting other plantations, the mine, the foundry, 
and sometimes going to England, seemed to in- 
crease his devotion to George's training while 
he could be at home. Parson Weems's "Life of 
Washington," for young people, gives the only 
stories told of this time in the life of the little 
Washington boy. 

In those days it was not considered wise or 
proper to tell tales about children. "Little 
children should be seen and not heard," was the 
common saying. As an excuse for repeating 
such things Mr. Weems evidently thought it 
was necessary to make little George Washington 
talk and act in a marvelous manner. Here are 
several of his stories just as he related them in 
his little book: 

34 



George Washington 

THE LESSON ON SELFISHNESS 

Some idea of Mr. Washington's plan 
of education in this respect may be col- 
lected from the following anecdote, re- 
lated to me twenty years ago by an aged 
lady, who was a distant relative, and, 
when a girl, spent much of her time in 
the family: 

*^0n a fine morning, '^ said she, *'in 
the fall of 1737, Mr. Washington, hav- 
ing little George by the hand, came to 
the door and asked my cousin and my- 
self to walk with him to the orchard, 
promising he would show us a fine sight. 
On arriving at the orchard we were 
presented with a fine sight indeed. The 
whole earth as far as we could see was 
strewed with fruit; and yet the trees 
were bending under the weight of the 
apples, which hung in clusters like 
grapes, and vainly strove to hide their 
blushing cheeks behind the green 
leaves. 

'* 'Now, George,' said his father, 
'look here, my son. Don't you remem- 
ber when this cousin of yours brought 
you that large fine apple last spring, 
how hardly I could prevail on you to 
divide with your brothers and sisters; 
35 



The Story of Young 

though I promised you if you would but 
do it, God Almighty would give you 
plenty of apples this fall?^ 

**Poor George could not say a word; 
but hanging down his head looked quite 
confused, while with liis naked toes he 
scratched in the soft ground. 

*' *N"ow look up, my son,* continued 
his father, 'look up, George. See there, 
how richly the blessed God has made 
good my promise to you. Wherever 
you turn your eyes, you see trees loaded 
with fine fruit; many of them break- 
ing down; the ground is covered with 
mellow apples, more than you could eat, 
my son, in all your lifetime.' 

' ' George looked in silence on the wide 
wilderness of fruit. He marked the 
busy humming bees, and heard the gay 
notes of the birds ; then lifting his eyes, 
filling with shining moisture, to his 
father, he softly said: 

^' 'Well, pa, only forgive me this 
time ; and see if I ever be so stingy any 
more.' " 

A LITTLE LECTURE ON" SPEAKING THE 
TRUTH 

Never did the wise Ulysses take more 
pains with his beloved Telemachus, 
36 



George Washington 

than did Mr. Washington with George, 
to inspire him mth an early love of 
truth. 

''Truth, George," said he, "is the 
loveliest quality of youth. I would 
ride fifty miles, my son, to see the little 
boy whose heart is so honest, and his 
lips so pure, that we may depend upon 
every word he says. Oh, how lovely 
does such a child appear in the eyes of 
everybody! His parents dote upon 
him. His relations glory in him. They 
are constantly praising him to their 
children, whom they beg to imitate him. 
They are often sending for him to visit 
them ; and receive him, when he comes, 
with as much joy as if he were a little 
angel come to set pretty examples to 
their children. 

''But, oh! How different, George, is 
the case with the boy who is so given to 
lying that nobody can believe a word he 
says! He is looked at with aversion 
wherever he goes, and parents dread to 
see him among their children. Oh, 
George, my son, rather than to see you 
come to this pass, dear as you are to my 
heart, gladly would I assist to nail you 
up in your little coffin, and follow you 
to your grave. Hard, indeed, would it 
37 



The Story of Young 

be to me to give up my son, whose little 
feet are always ready to run about with 
me, and whose fondly looking eyes and 
sweet prattle make so large a part of 
my happiness. But still I would give 
him up, rather than to see him a com- 
mon liar." 

This, you'll say, was sowing good 
seed. Yes, it was : and the crop, thank 
God, was, as I believe it will ever be, 
where a man acts the true parent ; that 
is, the Guardian Angel by his child. 

THE STOEY OF THE LITTLE HATCHET AND 
THE CHERRY TREE 

The following anecdote is a ease in 
point. It is too valuable to be lost, and 
too true to be doubted ; for it was com- 
municated to me by the same excellent 
lady to whom I am indebted for the 
last: 

''When George, '' said she, ''was 
about six years old, he was made the 
wealthy master of a hatchet, of which, 
like most little boys, he was immoder- 
ately fond, and was constantly going 
about chopping everything that came in 
his way. One day, in the garden, where 
he often amused himself hacking his 
38 



George Washington 

mother's pea-sticks, he unluckily tried 
the edge of his hatchet on the body of a 
beautiful young English cherry tree, 
which he barked so terribly that I don't 
believe the tree ever got the better of it. 
The next morning the old gentleman, 
finding out what had befallen his tree, 
which, by the by, was a great favorite, 
came into the house and with much 
warmth asked for the mischievous au- 
thor, declaring, at the same time, that 
he would not have taken five guineas 
for the tree. Nobody could tell him 
anything about it. Presently George 
and his hatchet made their appearance. 

^' 'George,' said his father, 'do you 
know who killed that beautiful little 
cherry tree yonder in the garden 1' 

"This was a tough question, and 
George staggered under it for a mo- 
ment; but quickly recovered himself; 
and looking at his father, with the sweet 
face of youth, brightened with the in- 
expressible charm of all-conquering 
truth, he bravely cried out : 

" 'I can't tell a lie, pa; you know I 
can't tell a lie. I did cut it with my 
hatchet. ' 

" 'Rmi to my arms, you dearest boy,' 
cried his father in transports. 'Run to 
39 



The Story of Young 

my arms. Glad am I, George, that you 
killed my tree ; for you have paid me for 
it a thousand fold. Such an act of 
heroism in my son is more worth than a 
thousand trees, though blossomed with 
silver, and their fruits of purest gold.' '' 

This, then, is Parson Weems's description of 
the immortal encounter of the Little Hatchet 
versus the Cherry Tree. It would have been far 
better if he had repeated it as that ^'excellent 
lady," the Washingtons' cousin, related it to 
him. 

Captain Washington, at this time, was a little 
over forty, though referred to in the story as 
''the old gentleman;" and that ''youth," whose 
"sweet face brightened with the inexpressible 
charm of all-conquering truth," was a boy of 
six ! Also, it requires quite a stretch of the mind 
to think of any father exclaiming to his small 
boy: "Glad am I that you killed my tree," 
and, "Such an act of heroism in my son is 
more worth than a thousand trees — though hlos- 
somed with silver, and their fruits of purest 
gold." 

This last sentence does not sound like a re- 
mark even the kindest parent would make to his 

40 



George Washington 

little boy just after he had ''girdled'' a valuable 
tree. It reads more like the close of a flowery^ 
sermon by a very sentimental minister. 

THE BURNING OF THE HOUSE AND GOING TO SCHOOL 
TO ''hobby" 

In the spring of 1739, while Captain Wash- 
ington was away from home, the house at Hunt- 
ing Creek Place took fire. Some sparks from a 
bonfire, made of a pile of rubbish in the garden, 
were blown up on the roof and a blaze started in 
the dry shingles. The house was so far up on 
the hill that the fire gained considerable head- 
way before the slaves could carry much water 
up the steep climb from the Potomac River. 
While the frightened blacks were wildly fight- 
ing the flames with pails of water, Mrs. Wash- 
ington showed her cool-headed common-sense 
by moving out the best of the furniture and val- 
uables, with the help of the cook and a maid. 
Instead of wasting time in idle regrets, or watch- 
ing the burning ruins, with the children and 
servants, she ordered dinner made ready and 
the table set in a small building near by. 

So George, now seven years old, passed 

41 



The Stoiy of Young 

through the excitement of a second removal — 
this time to Staiford County, on the Rappahan- 
nock, opposite Fredericksburg, which was a 
center for his father's iron interests. From this 
home he began to go to school in a cabin in the 
midst of a grove of young pines which had 
grown up in a worn-out tobacco field, near Fal- 
mouth Church. 

The sexton of this church was a good-natured, 
one-eyed man named Grove, who kept a *' field 
school.'' as it was called. He was nicknamed 
''Hobby" by his pupils, who do not seem to have 
had much respect for him. He was called a 
''convict," but he must have been a good sort of 
a man, or the families of that neighborhood 
would not have allowed their small sons to be 
his pupils. 

"Hobby" could teach George little more than 
the "A B C's," but he took great pride in say- 
ing, according to Weems, after his former pupil 
became President, that " 'twas he, who, between 
his knees, had laid the foundation of George 
Washington 's greatness. ' ' 

At first George rode to school in front of 
Peter, a negro slave. When he was given a 
pony for his own, Peter rode beside him, for the 

42 ^ 



George Washington 

boy fell off occasionally, to his mother's great 
alarm. She was so fond that she was afraid to 
have him go into the least danger, or take part 
in sports in which all the real boys of that day 
engaged with a royal will. 

GEORGE AND THE BUSTLE BOY 

George soon developed the military spirit of 
his ancestors. This was brought home to him 
by the letters of his adored half-brother. Cap- 
tain Lawrence, who had shown signal bravery 
in the attack on Cartagena. The 'Afield school" 
was soon divided into two fighting factions, the 
little boys carrjdng cornstalks for guns, and 
hollow gourds for drums. George was a big, 
strong boy for his age, and easily became the 
leader of the English or *' white men." His 
rival, a larger and older boy, named William 
Bustle, was chief of the enemy, whether French, 
Spanish, or Indians. The boys fought every 
day, shooting arrows or throwing snowballs, in 
winter, from behind the pines in the grove, after 
the manner of early Indian warfare. Often the 
boys came together in hand-to-hand conflicts, 
and then there was much clashing and slashing 

43 



The Story of Young 

of wooden knives and pulling of one another's 
long hair, in pretense of scalping. 

One writer relates that, during the winter 
before George was ten, the Bustle boy hit 
George in the eye with a snowball in which he 
had packed a stone. The Washington boy was 
kept at home several days while his mother in- 
dignantly treated him for a black eye. Mary 
Washington urged her husband to interfere. 
But Captain Washington said: 

^'No, it's a boys' quarrel. George must learn 
to fight his own battles." 

Wlien the Washington boy went back to 
school he gave that Bustle boy a sound thrash- 
ing. The other boys said George was so mad 
that nothing seemed to hurt him, and he did not 
even know when Bustle shouted ** Enough!" — 
so several of them had to pull their white cap- 
tain off his *' Indian" enemy. 



A LETTER TO *' DICKEY " LEE 



Aside from his sister and brothers at home, 
and the boys in ''Hobby's" school, George had 
a friend about his own age, Richard Henry Lee, 
whose name was placed high in his country's 

44 



George Washington 

history, about forty years later, for it was 
he who moved, in the Continental Congress, 
the adoption of the Declaration of Independ- 
ence. 

Here is a quaint letter which, it is claimed, 
George Washington sent, when about ten, to 
this friend. If he wrote it he must have had 
help from an older and wiser head than his 
own: 



''Dear Dickey: I thank you very 
much for the pretty picture book you 
gave me. Sam asked me to show him 
the pictures and I showed him all the 
pictures in it; and I read to him how 
the tame elephant took care of the mas- 
ter's little boy, and put him on his back 
and would not let anybody touch his 
master's little son. I can read three or 
four pages sometimes without missing 
a word. Ma says I may go to see you 
and stay all day with you next week if 
it be not rainy. Ma says I may ride my 
pony. Hero, if Uncle Ben will go with 
me and lead Hero. I have a little piece 
of poetry about the picture book you 
gave me, but I mustn't tell you who 
wrote the poetry. 

45 



The Story of Young 

**G. W.'s compliments to R. H. L., 
And likes his book full well; 
Henceforth will count him his friend, 
And hopes many happy days he may 
spend. 

**Your good friend, 

''George Washington 

"I am going to get a whip-top soon, 
and you may see it, and whip it." 

"Sam," of course, was George's younger 
brother, and "Uncle Ben" was an old black 
slave. 

GEORGE LOSES HIS BEST FRIEND 

Captain Lawrence, now twenty-four, came 
home from "the wars" that year, with the in- 
tention of going to England soon, and continu- 
ing in the king's service as an officer. But two 
circumstances changed his plans. The first was 
that he fell in love with beautiful Anne Fairfax 
of "Belvoir," a fine estate on the Potomac four 
miles below the house that burned down at 
Hunting Creek Place. 

The marriage was to have occurred early in 
the spring of 1743, but an event put off the 

46 



George Washington 

happy occasion. While George was away at 
Choptank, twenty miles distant, visiting his 
cousins, "Robin" and "Lai," as they nicknamed 
Robert and Lawrence, the sons of his father's 
brother John, he was sent for in great haste and 
told of the serious illness of Captain Washing- 
ton, with what was known as gout of the stom- 
ach. In an account written as if by Washington 
himself, the lad's experiences are described by 
the aged ex-President at Mount Vernon. More 
than fifty years afterward Washington wrote 
thus of the great grief that came upon him when 
a boy of eleven; 

"We were merry at supper, w^hen 
Peter, who was supposed to look after 
me, arrived with the news of my 
father's sudden illness. It was the first 
of my too many experiences of the 
ravage time brings to all men. I heard 
the news with a kind of awe, but with- 
out realizing how serious, in many 
ways, was this summons. I rode home 
behind Peter, and found my mother in 
a state of distraction. She led me to 
the bedside of my father, crying out: 
*He is dying!' 

"The children were around him, and 
47 



The Story of Young 

he was groaning in great pain; but he 
kissed us in turn, and said to me, *Be 
good to your mother.' 

**I may say that throughout her life 
I have kept the promise I made him as 
I knelt, crying, at his bedside. He died 
that night, and I lost my best friend." 



CHAPTER III 



The Big Boy Washington 



GEORGE AND HIS MOTHER 

The greater part of his father's estate was 
left, according to the custom of the time, to the 
eldest son, Lawrence. This included the Hunt- 
ing Creek I^ace, where their house had burned 
down four years before, with twenty-five hun- 
dred acres and all his interests in the Principio 
Iron Works, besides the mill and the slaves liv- 
ing on that estate. 

To Augustine the father willed "Wakefield,'' 
in Westmoreland County, the place on which 
George was born. 

48 



George Washington 

To George he left the farm on the Rappahan- 
nock, opposite Fredericksburg, some land on 
Deep Run, and ten slaves ; besides, the property 
bequeathed to Lawrence was to go to George, as 
the eldest son of the second wife, if Lawrence 
should die childless, or if a child born to him 
should die also. Samuel, John, and Charles 
each received land and slaves, and their sister 
Betty four hundred pounds in money. 

The young widow held the estates of her 
young children in trust and was to have the 
place on which they then lived until George 
should come of age, but before the ten years 
elapsed, other property reverted to him, under 
his father's will, and he never took *' Ferry 
Farm,'' as they called it, from his mother. 

Besides this, Mary Washington had sixteen 
hundred acres of her own and a special legacy 
from her husband. It was a large estate, and 
the good father must have felt, when he made 
his will, that he was providing liberally for 
them all. 

But the young wife, probably because Law- 
rence had received more than all her children 
together, felt by the contrast that she and they 
were poor, indeed. They had plenty of land 

49 

4"— Washington. 



The Story of Young 



?> 



but little money, so they were "land poor, 
like most of the Virginia planters of their 
day. 

The two half-brothers, being of age, came into 
possession of their estates at once. In June, two 
months after his father's death, Lawrence was 
married to Anne, the daughter of the Hon- 
orable William Fairfax, of "Belvoir," who, of 
course, brought to him more money and lands. 
Lawrence built an elegant mansion at Hunting 
Creek Place, and named it Mount Vernon, in 
honor of the admiral under whom he had served 
in the Spanish war. 

Austin, the other half-brother, married Anne 
Aylett, a wealthy belle of Westmoreland, who 
added her income to "Wakefield," where they 
soon went to live. 

Mary Washington was left with her five chil- 
dren at "Ferry Farm." While her husband 
lived she had felt that she had a share in all his 
estates and now she seemed to be quite poor by 
comparison. She began at once to make George, 
though he was only eleven, feel the responsibil- 
ity of being her eldest son. 

This, with his serious disposition and his 
father's dying injunction, made him feel deeply 

50 



George Washington 

the necessity of providing for his own future, if 
not for the entire family. 

His mother, hamited with the constant dread 
of poverty, could not help contrasting George's 
disadvantages with the advantages of his half- 
brothers. But George did not manifest the 
slightest degree of env}^, as might have been ex- 
pected. He had been devoted to his father, and 
for him to resent what had been so carefully 
planned for them all would be a grievous wrong 
to his father's memory. 

If Captain Washington had lived long enough 
George might have been sent to William and 
Mary College, then fifty years old, and in age 
second only to Harvard in all America. It is 
doubtful if Augustine Washington intended to 
send George to Appleby School, where he and his 
eldest two sons had gone to complete their edu- 
cation. George, being a ''younger son," would 
have to shift for himself, and could not expect 
to be fitted for the career of a Virginia ' ' gentle- 
man," like his much-admired brother Law- 
rence. 

He consoled himself with the knowledge that 
if men's manners are "finished" in England, 
"so, too, were their virtues." He had doubtless 

51 



The Story of Young 

seen agreeable young fellows wholly spoiled by 
being sent abroad to school. And to George's 
practical mind, ''Mother Wit'' would fit him 
^'better than Mother Country" for getting on 
in the world. 

Though George reconciled himself to this 
state of things, his mother did not. Her oldest 
boy was just as worthy of such privileges as any 
other mother's son, and to have him denied them 
made her discontented. She was a most capable 
woman, well fitted to manage the estate left to 
her care. 

Because of the lack of schools in Virginia, she 
was not highly educated, though she was of a 
good Virginia family, because girls were not 
sent away to school like their brothers. Mary 
Washington was an admirable mother to 
George. From her he inherited the qualities 
that did most to make him the great man he 
became. 

She brought him up strictly in accordance 
with the ideas of her time. Her children were 
thoroughly instructed in the catechism of the- 
Church of England, and were taken regularly to 
Church. Sunday afternoons she often read to 
them from Matthew Hale's ''Commentaries, 

52 



George Washinsfton 



■to 



Moral and Divine/' to which she added com- 
mentaries of her own, on their conduct. 

George alvs^aj^s retained a wholesome respect, 
which amounted almost to awe, for his mother. 
This formal reverence he never forgot, always 
beginning his letters to her with ''Honored 
Madam," and signing himself, ''Your dutiful 
son." Lawrence Washington, of Choptank, the 
Cousin "Lai" George was visiting when his 
father died, said of Mary Washington long 
afterward : 

"I was often there with George, his 
playmate, schoolmate, and young man's 
companion. Of the mother I was ten 
times more afraid than of my own par- 
ents. She awed me in the midst of her 
kindness, for she was, indeed, truly 
kind. 

"I have often been present with her 
sons, proper, tall fellows, too, and we 
were mute as mice ; and even now, when 
time has whitened my locks, and I am 
the grandparent of a second generation, 
I could not behold that remarkable 
woman without feelings it is impossible 
to describe. Whoever has seen that awe- 
inspiring air and manner so character- 
53 



The Story of Youiig 

istic of the Father of his Country, will 
remember the matron as she appeared 
when the presiding genius of her well- 
ordered household, commanding and 
being obeyed." 

The widow Washington used to ride about the 
plantation in a low carriage, instead of on horse- 
back, as a man would have done, giving her 
orders and overseeing the work. 

The story goes that she one day discovered 
that in one instance her agent had not followed 
her directions. When she took him to task for 
it he explained that he had found a better way 
to do it, and when he was about to show her his 
improvement, she sternly interrupted him with : 

*'And, pray, w^ho gave you any exercise of 
judgment in the matter? I command you, sir; 
there is nothing left for you to do but to obey." 

George's fondness for horses 

There seems to have been no school near 
''Ferry Farm" of a higher grade than 
"Hobby's" field school, so George was left to 
his own devices for a while. He had his younger 
brothers and Betty to look after and to play 

54 




BRKAKIXC, A 1"II:RV COI.T. 



George Washington 

with. He felt the care of them more since his 
father died, but he was a great, growing boy 
and as restless as such boys generally are. 

Although he did not have the peculiar tempta- 
tions of the city boy, the tendency to be idle and 
*' good-for-nothing" is always strong, no matter 
where a lad lives. 

There were plenty of men, laborers, and 
slaves on the plantation. Sailors often visited 
the wharf on the estate and spun yarns of 
pirates and sea adventures, while taking on a 
cargo of tobacco. Of course, George enjoyed the 
outdoor life, making friends of dogs and horses 
— especially the horses, for which he manifested 
a great fondness all through life. 

Then he ran, jumped, wrestled, pitched quoits, 
tossed iron bars, swam, fished, hunted, as 
healthy, energetic country boj^s have done in all 
ages of the world. No doubt he went coon hunt- 
ing many a night, and had the great delight of 
roasting ears of corn, which has always been a 
favorite sport in Virginia. 

But George's chief passion was for horses. 
He liked nothing better than to be astride a 
fractious animal and keep his seat in spite of all 
its efforts to throw him. To control a horse gave 

55 



The Story of Young 

him the keenest pleasure, the sense of mastery. 

There was a dealer in blood horses at Alex- 
andria who offered to make the boy a present of 
a certain fiery colt if he could ride it to Mount 
Vernon and back without losing his seat. The 
lad mounted the animal and started off. In due 
time he rode back in triumph. But when the 
dealer told George the horse was his, George 
laughed and shook his head, saying he had not 
earned it, for he had been thrown once, and 
dragged on the ground, too, but he did not lose 
his hold on the reins. 

The following incident, described by Wash- 
ington's adopted son, George Washington 
Parke Custis, was said to have occurred about 
this time. It reads like an imitation of the 
familiar story of young Alexander taming a 
fiery steed, to which is added a *'hatchet-and- 
cherry-tree" moral: 

HOW HE "broke" the SORREL COLT 

"We shall present our readers witH 
one anecdote of no ordinary interest 
and character. The blooded horse was 
the Virginian favorite in those days as 
well as these. Washington's mother, 
56 



George Washington 

fond of the animal to which her hus- 
band had been tenderly attached, had 
preserved the race in its greatest pur- 
ity, and, at the time of our story, pos- 
sessed several horses of superior 
promise. 

"One there was, a sorrel, destined to 
be as famous (and for much better rea- 
son) as the horse which the brutal 
emperor raised to the dignity of consul. 
This sorrel was of a fierce and ungov- 
ernable nature, and resisted all at- 
tempts to subject him to the rein. He 
had reached his fullest size and vigor 
unconscious of a rider; he ranged free 
in the air, which he snuffed in triumph, 
tossing his mane to the vdnds, and 
spurning the earth in the pride of his 
freedom. It was a matter of common 
remark that a man would never be 
found hardy enough to back [mount] 
and ride this vicious horse. Several 
had essayed, but, deterred by the fury 
of the animal, they had desisted from 
their attempts, and the steed remained 
unbroken. 

*'The young Washington proposed to 

his companions that if they would assist 

him in confining the steed so that a 

bridle could be placed in his mouth, he 

57 



The Story of Young 

would engage to tame the terror of the 
parish. 

"Accordingly, early the ensuing 
morning, the associates decoyed the 
horse into an enclosure where they se- 
cured him and forced a bit into his 
mouth. Bold, vigorous, and young, the 
daring youth sprang to the unenvied 
seat, and bidding his comrades remove 
their tackle the indignant courser 
rushed to the plain. 

"As if disdaining his burden, he at 
first attempted to fly, but soon felt the 
power of an arm which could have 
tamed his Arab grandsires in their 
wildest course on their native deserts. 
The struggle now became terrific to the 
beholders, who almost wished they had 
not joined in an enterprise so likely to 
be fatal to their daring associate. 

"But the youthful hero, that 'spirit- 
protected man,' clung to the furious 
steed, till, centaur-like, he appeared to 
make part of the animal itself. Long 
was the conflict and the fears of his 
associates became more relieved as, 
with matchless skill, the rider pre- 
served his seat, and with unyielding 
force controlled the courser's rage, 
when the gallant horse, summoning all 
58 



George Washington 

his powers to one mighty effort, reared 
and plunged with tremendous violence, 
burst his noble heart and died in an 
instant. 

^'The rider, 'alive, unharmed and 
without a wound,' was joined by the 
youthful group, and all gazed upon the 
generous steed, which, now prostrate, 
'trailed in the dust the honors of his 
mane,' while from distended nostrils 
gushed in torrents the life-blood that a 
moment before had swollen in his 
veins. 

' ' The first surprise was scarcely over, 
with a 'What's to be done"? Who shall 
tell this tale?' when the party were 
summoned to the morning's meal. A 
conversation, most mal a propos to the 
youthful culprits, became introduced 
by the matron's asking: 

" 'Pray, young gentlemen, have you 
seen my hooded colts in your rambles % 
I hope they are well taken care of ; my 
favorite, I am told, is as large as his 
sire. ' 

"Considerable embarrassment being 
observable, the lady repeated her ques- 
tion, when George replied: 

" 'Your favorite, the sorrel, is dead, 
madam. ' 

59 



The Story of Young 

** ^Dead'?' exclaimed the lady, *Why, 
how has that happened?' 

** 'That sorrel horse has been long 
considered ungovernable, and beyond 
the power of man to back or ride him; 
this morning, aided by my friends, we 
forced a bit into his mouth; I backed 
him, I rode him, and in a desperate 
struggle for the mastery, he fell under 
me and died upon the spot.' 

''The hectic of a moment was ob- 
served to flush the matron's cheek, but 
like a summer cloud it passed away, and 
all was serene and tranquil when she 
remarked : 

" 'It is well; but while I regret the 
loss of my favorite, I rejoice in my son, 
who always speaks the truth.' " 



CHAPTER IV 



Going to Live at Augustine's 



The half-brothers soon saw that it would not 
do to let George run wild on "Ferry Farm." 
He ought to be going to school — but where? 

60 



Georg-e Washington 



to 



There was nothing in that neighborhood higher 
or better than poor "Hobby's" field school, and 
none at all near Mount Vernon, or Lawrence 
would have been glad to have the boy with him. 

But there was a good school, for those days, 
taught by a Mr. Williams, at Oak Grove, only 
four miles from "Wakefield," the farm on 
which George was born, and where Augustine, 
lately married, now resided. It was decided 
that George should live with Austin, as he was 
called in the family, and go to Mr. Williams's 
school. 

It was hard for the widowed mother to make 
up her mind to let George, her stay and reliance, 
go away from her for so long a time, but when 
she was convinced that it was necessary, that he 
might be able to earn a better living, she gave 
her consent. As he would be allowed to come 
home for his vacations, and over Sunday now 
and then, she made the best of it, as many a 
fond mother has had to do since then. 

It is not likely that George himself was 
anxious to leave his mother and the younger 
children to go to school. Though he was but 
twelve years old he realized that he must make 
the sacrifice to better fit him for the support and 

61 



The Story of Young 

care of the five children. His mother and sister 
and little brothers were half broken-hearted 
when he went away on horseback beside his 
brother, for an absence of years. 

Augustine was a larger, heartier and stronger 
man than Captain Lawrence ; he was more like 
their father, whose name he bore. He and his 
wife, alread}^ very fond of young George, did all 
in their power to make his long sta}^ with them 
pleasant and helpful. Doubtless vviiat the boy 
enjoyed most of all was the fine stable at 
''Wakefield," in which there were no less than 
thirty horses, many of them thoroughbreds. Of 
course, George had a horse for his o\^ni to ride 
to school, four miles and back, every week-day, 
and for an occasional gallop of twenty miles to 
visit his mother and the children at ''Ferry 
Farm" over Sunday. 

IN THE OAK GROVE SCHOOL 

At Oak Grove School George took what would 
now be called the business course. He was al- 
ways a poor speller, and weak in grammar, but 
strong in mathematics. Young as he was, he 
studied hard, although he was as fond of out- 

62 



George Washington 

door games as any boj^ could be. Lewis Willis, 
a schoolmate, used to relate that wliile the rest 
^'were playing at bandy and other games, he 
(George) was behind the door ciphering;" but 
that, on one occasion, the Washington boy was 
seen ''romping with one of the largest girls ; this 
was so unusual that it excited no little comment 
among the other lads" — for George, at this age, 
was overgrown, awkward, and shy. 

Bashful he may have been with the girls, but 
George Washington was at home with the boys, 
and several stories are told of his running foot 
races, and leaving them behind every time in a 
way that was discouraging to the rest. As at 
''Hobby's," he soon became a leader, and the 
other boys believed so firmly in his fairness that 
they sometimes appealed to him as umpire in 
their disputes, and were always willing to stand 
by his decisions. 

Of all the branches taught in his school, land 
surveying seems to have been a favorite with 
Mr, Williams. He used to go out with a class of 
older boys, carrying the transit, pole and chain, 
measuring the land along the river. 

From the first George was interested in sur- 
veying. Of course, he liked any study that 

63 



The Story of Young 

would keep Iiim out of doors. Before he was far 
enough along in mathematics to understand the 
science, the teacher allowed him to carry the 
measuring chain or set up the pole to be sighted 
through the transit by the surveyor. By the 
time George had advanced so far as to under- 
stand the theory of mathematics he had acquired 
the necessary knowledge of the field work con- 
nected with surveying. 
«- It was fortunate that the lad had discovered, 
so early in life, how much he liked surveying. 
It is important for a youth to find out as soon as 
he is able what study he wishes to pursue 
through life, for he is almost sure to do well 
w^hat he likes to do, and to do anything well is to 
be on the high road to success. 

Within a few years George had an opportun- 
ity to apply the knowledge gained in Mr. Will- 
iams's school. It paid him very well, indeed, as 
long as he needed to work for a living, and it was 
afterward a means of opening the way for his 
wonderful career. 

When the Door of Opportunity opened 
George Washington walked right in, but he had 
a great deal to do with opening that door him- 
self. As the boy "Abe'' Lincoln said about be- 

64 



George Washington 

ing President while he was only a farm hand: 
*'0h, I'll study and get ready, and then the 
chance will come," so George Washington also 
studied and got ready, and when the opportun- 
ity came he made it more than mere chance. 

''the young man's companion*' 

When George was ten years old he owned a 
kind of hand-book designed to teach many 
things learned in the schools and colleges. The 
title of this book was "The Young Man's Com- 
panion: or, Arithmetick Made Easy." 

Across the top of its title-page was written, in 
a cramj^ed, boyish hand, "George Washington, 
1742." 

"The Young Man's Companion" was com- 
piled by W. Mather, as stated on its quaint title- 
page, "in a plain and easy Style that a young 
Man may attain the same without a Tutor." 
It covered so many branches as to make it a fore- 
runner of the modern correspondence school, 
for the benefit of those who cannot go to school 
or college. 

"The Young Man's Companion" claimed to 
show how to read, wi'ite, and figure. It was a 

65 

5 — iVashiiigton, 



The Story of Young 

^* complete letter writer/' giving the proper 
forms for business letters, and the titles by 
which ''persons of quality" should be addressed. 
It showed how to survey land, navigate the sea, 
and build houses. It gave recipes for making 
ink and cider, and prescriptions for many dis- 
eases and ailments. It was a cyclopedia for the 
pioneer and planter, and designed to take the 
place, in the backwoods, of the lawyer, the doc- 
tor, and the schoolmaster, for America was 
nearly all backwoods in those days. 

It would be easier to tell what the *' Young 
Man's Companion" did not contain than to 
enumerate all the branches it pretended to teach. 
George must have taken this compendium to 
Oak Grove, for it is full of rules, tables, and 
land measurements acquired in school. 

On the blank pages provided for the purpose 
he wrote in his neat, flowing hand, forms of 
notes, deeds, wills and other legal documents. 
In it were also copies of his letters, drafts of 
crude poetry, boyish caricatures of his school- 
mates, and even, with many a scrawl and a 
flourish, strange-looking birds that never flew 
o'er sea or land. 

**The Young Man's Companion" also ''speaks 

66 



George Washington 

volumes'' about the boy and young man to whom 
it belonged, for nearly all that is known of the 
youth of Washington is found in that old book, 
from the day when the ten-year-old boy wrote 
his name in it to the record he made of his read- 
ings and other data after he had become a 
stately, dignified young man. It shows how he 
got into a habit which does much toward bring- 
ing success in life — the habit of "putting things 
down." 

GOING TO SCHOOL IN FREDERICKSBURG 

About two years after George was again liv- 
ing at "Perry Farm," and going across the river 
to a select high school kept by the Rev. James 
Marye, rector of St. George's Church, in Fred- 
ericksburg. 

As he could not have learned all that Mr. 
Williams could teach him, for he was not a bril- 
liant student, it is likely that his mother could 
bear the separation no longer, and George had 
come home on her account. 

The good rector's school was not at all to his 
taste. Instead of higher mathematics and sur- 
veying, Mr. Marye taught French, Latin, and 

67 



The Story of Young 

deportment. Washington had occasion several 
times in his eventful career to regret that he did 
not learn French at this school, for the master, 
being a French Huguenot, could have given him 
excellent instruction in that language. George 
did not like to study languages. 

Washington often referred with regret, while 
he was President, to his shortcomings in this 
branch of learning. 

He had to work slowly and painfully, when 
an old man, to make up some of the deficiencies 
he might have overcome in half the time while in 
school. As genius is the ability to take pains, 
President Washington's letters and state papers 
became famous for their clear, forcible, and ele- 
gant language. Of course, some of this may 
have been due to the efficiency of his secretaries, 
but he had to acquire, in the presidential man- 
sion, much that he might have learned at St. 
George's rectory. 

It was because he expected to lead the life of 
a planter and not a Virginia *' gentleman" like 
Captain Lawrence, that he thought little of the 
accomplishments. Being of a practical turn, he 
clung to the idea of being a surveyor, little 
thinking that, useful as his knowledge of sur- 

68 



George Washington 

veying proved to be, the rules of civility were to 
be of far greater importance to him. 

He boarded part of the time with a widow in 
Fredericksburg, whose sons, great, strapping 
fellows, proved to be his equal, if not superior, 
in wrestling and other feats of physical strength. 

Many years afterward one of them became a 
captain in General Washington's army. 

George must have learned a little Latin with 
Mr. Marye, for, on a fly-leaf in Patrick's Latin 
translation of Homer, are written, in the boy's 
plain, round hand, the f ollo\sdng lines : 

Hunc mihi quaeso (bone vir) libellum 
Redde si forsan tenues repertum 
Ut scias qui sum sine fraude scriptum 
Est mihi nomen, 

Georgio Washington, 
George Washington, 

Fredericksburg, 
Virginia. 

**THE RULES OF CRTLITT" 

As a part of his education as a Virginia gen- 
tleman of the old school, the Rev. Mr. Marye 
gave George to copy and learn by heart more 

69 



The Story of Young 

than one hundred *' Rules of Civility and Decent 
Behaviour in Company and Conversation." 

These queer directions are preserved just as 
the Washington boy wrote them, yellowed by 
time, and some of them nibbled by mice. It used 
to be stated, in all seriousness, that George 
Washington made up these rules himself. That 
would have been in keeping with the prevailing 
ideas of him. But it has recently been discov- 
ered that they were first published in French, 
and afterward translated for English and Amer- 
ican use long before George went to school in 
Fredericksburg. 

Here are a dozen of them, with all the school- 
boy's mistakes in spelling and capitalization, 
which were not so exact even then, in books, as 
they are now : 

^' Every Action done in Company 
ought to be with Some Sign of Respect 
to those that are Present." 

*'If you Cough, Sneeze, Sigh or 
Yawn, do it not Loud, but Privately; 
and Speak not in your Yawning, but 
put your handkerchief or Hand before 
your face and turn aside." 

*'When you Sit down. Keep your 
70 



George Washington 

Feet firm and Even, without putting 
one on the other or Crossing them." 

''Keep your Nails clean and Short, 
also your Hands and Teeth Clean yet 
without shewing any great Concern for 
them. ' ' 

"Read no Letters, Books or Papers 
in Company but when there is a neces- 
sity for the doing of it you must ask 
leave: come not near the Books or 
Writing of Another so as to read them 
unless desired or give your opinions of 
them unask'd also look not nigh when 
another is writing a Letter." 

''Let your Discourse with Men of 
Business be Short and Comprehen- 
sive." 

"Mock not nor Jest of anything of 
Importance; break no Jests that are 
Sharp Biting, and if you deliver any- 
thing witty and pleasant abstain from 
Laughing thereat yourself." 

"Strive not with your Superiors in 
argument, but always Submit your 
Judgment with Modesty." 

"Undertake not what you cannot 
Perform but be Careful to keep your 
Promise." 

' ' Speak not Evil of the absent for it is 
unjust." 

71 



The Story of Young 

''Let your Recreations be Manfull 
not Sinfull." 

''Labour to keep alive in your Breast 
that Little Spark of Celestial fire called 
Conscience. ' ' 

A BITTER DISAPPOINTMENT 

It was during this restless period that George, 
looking into the future by the light of a boyish 
wish, began to long for "a liTe of the ocean 
wave.'^ 

The farm, which was to be his at twenty-one, 
would scarcely support his mother's family, and 
even his older brothers did not favor his becom- 
ing a licensed surveyor. A less faithful boy of 
fifteen would have run away, hoping to appease 
his family after making a fortune and his mark 
in the world. George, with all the confidence of 
boyhood, had not a doubt that he would be able 
to do both. Fame and fortune seemed easier to 
win in those daj^s when the country, too, was 
young, and everything seemed to be waiting for 
the man who was brave enough to fight for it. 

His oldest brother also began to think that if 
George could enter the navy it would be a good 
way out of a double difficulty, by taking care of 

72 



George Washington 

the lad himself and leaving *' Ferry Farm" for 
the use of the rest of his mother's family. It 
must have been about this time that the break- 
ing of the sorrel colt occurred, though described 
as having happened earlier by Washington's 
adopted son. George's mother had lived in con- 
stand fear of his recklessness mth horses, and 
his older brothers were sometimes afraid the 
boy would break his neck while breaking colts 
to ride. In the navy his leading and daring 
spirit would be turned to splendid account, and 
be sure of winning its reward. 

No doubt Mary Washington was reminded of 
the dangers which beset her venturesome son at 
*' Ferry Farm" when they suggested to her that 
it would be well to try to secure a place for him 
as midshipman. Beside her terror lest some- 
thing should happen to her eldest son, she had 
a haunting dread of poverty. 

Lawrence put it well before her that George, 
by going to sea, might make a place for himself 
in the world, and leave the farm and other prop- 
erty for her and the other children. This ap- 
pealed to her as a sensible thing, and she gave 
her consent to the plan. 

The brothers must have been surprised when 

73 



The Story of Young 

the mother consented so readily, for only a short 
time before, she had felt that she could no longer 
bear to let the boy board at his brother's and go 
to school only twenty miles away — and now she 
had expressed her willingness to let him go to 
sea for life ! Greatly elated, they hurried back 
to Mount Vernon to make the necessary ar- 
rangements. It would take at least six months 
to hear from the Admiralty, or Navy Depart- 
ment, in England. Lawrence had only to let 
Admiral Vernon know that he wished a mid- 
shipman's berth for his younger brother, and he 
felt sure that it could be arranged, for the ad- 
miral had kept up his friendship for the gallant 
young captain after health and duty compelled 
him to retire from the service of the king. It 
was in honor of their friendship that Lawrence 
had named his sightly estate "Mount Vernon." 
But Widow "Washington's heart could not fol- 
low her head — for she was a better mother than 
business woman. After George and Lawrence 
had gone to Mount Vernon she thought it all 
over. She was astonished at herself for yielding 
to George's earnest appeal, so ably supported 
by the older brother's arguments. She could 
not bear the thought of George's going away for 

74 



George Washington 

life, yet she was too proud-spirited to take back 
her word. How could she keep him from going 
without forfeiting her self-respect ? She had no 
one to help her; for every one seemed to be in 
league with Lawrence and against her. 

At last the anxious mother thought of her 
brother, a lawyer in London, and Avi^ote to him, 
without mentioning Admiral Vernon's friend- 
ship for Lawrence. It may be that her brother 
did not know that her husband had been a ship- 
master, as one of many business enterprises. 
Mary Washington was not an expert letter 
writer, but she doted on her son George. She 
was most desirous that her brother should ad- 
vise as emphatically as possible against a sea 
life for George, and she was afraid, no doubt, 
that he would not write as she wished if he knew 
the whole story. 

After sending her letter to London she had to 
wait many weary months for a reply, uncer- 
tain whether it would be a help to her when re- 
ceived. 

Meanwhile the midshipman's warrant came 
promptly, and to intensify the excitement and 
anxiety, a man-of-war anchored in the Potomac 
just below Mount Vernon. The mother, watch- 

75 



The Story of Young 

ing and waiting at *^ Ferry Farm," thirty miles 
away, became nearly frantic lest her boy should 
be carried away before her helpless eyes. 

A friend and neighbor, who seems to have 
been requested to report what was going on in 
the house beside the Rappahannock, wrote from 
Fredericksburg to Lawrence : 

*'I am afraid Mrs. Washington will 
not keep up to her first resolution. She 
seems to dislike George's going to sea, 
and says several persons have told her 
it was a bad scheme. She offers several 
trifling objections, such as a fond, un- 
thinking mother habitually suggests, 
and I find that one word against his 
going has more weight than ten for it." 

At last George was ready to go. They re- 
ceived word that the warship was about to sail. 
The ''middy" uniform had come, and his little 
sailor chest was packed and hurried on board. 
His calm, but radiant happiness added to the 
mother's agony. Just at this juncture the long- 
looked-for letter came from Uncle Joseph. It 
was dated ' ' Stratf ord-by-Bow, 19th May, 1747," 
and ran as follows : 

76 




^■()U^■(". \v.\>iii.\(;t()x and his .motuhr 



Georsre Washington 



to 



**I understand that you are advised 
and have some thoughts of putting your 
son George to sea. I think he had bet- 
ter be put apprentice to a tinker, for a 
common sailor before the mast has by 
no means the liberty of the subject: for 
they will press him from ship to ship, 
where he has fifty shillings a month, 
and make him take twenty-three, and 
cut and slash and use him like a negro, 
or rather like a dog. 

**And as to anj^ considerable prefer- 
ment in the navy, it is not to be ex- 
pected, as there are always so many 
gaping for it here who have interest 
[influence] and he has none. And if he 
should get to be master of a Virginia 
ship (which it is very difficult to do) a 
planter who has three or four hundred 
acres and three or four slaves, if he be 
industrious, may live more comfort- 
ably and leave his family in better bread 
than such a master of a ship can. . . . 

"He must not be too hasty to be rich, 
but go on gently and with patience, as 
things will naturally go. This method, 
without aiming to be a fine gentleman 
before his time, will carry a man more 
comfortably and surely through the 
world than going to sea, unless it be a 
77 



The Story of Young 

great chance indeed. I pray God keep 
you and yours. 

''Your loving brother, 

"Joseph Ball." 



This was just the kind of advice the sister had 
hoped her brother would send. She drove at 
once to Mount Vernon and laid the letter before 
the two sons. She now had a lawyer and a man 
of the world on her side. Her brother's counsel 
was good so far as he knew the family's affairs. 
What he wrote about the life of a sailor before 
the mast was all too true — but the boy was not 
to ship as a common sailor. 

To George and Lawrence the letter seemed 
smart and unfair. The remarks about appren- 
ticing his sister's son to a tinker, because her 
family w^as without influence, sounded like a 
sneer, and the advice to the boy not to try to be 
a ''fine gentleman" would have been downright 
insulting if that uncle had known George. 

Though the letter had been written as if 
prompted by hearsay (as if a rumor of the boy's 
going to sea had reached him in London), they 
suspected that it had been penned at the 

78 



George Wasliington 

mother's request, but George maintained a re- 
spectful silence on that point. 

Seeing that the letter had overshot the mark, 
the poor mother-heart gave way after its long, 
tense struggle, and the stern, proud woman 
broke down. With tears of anguish she im- 
plored George not to add to the grief and lone- 
liness of her widowhood by forsaking her now. 

That settled it — for his mother's sake — not be- 
cause of his uncle's meddling letter — George 
Washington gave up what he believed to be his 
only hope for the future. He did this so man- 
fully that, in spite of his annoyance at having 
their plans so unjusth" thwarted, Lawrence did 
all he could to comfort his young brother. 

The midshipman's chest was quickly brought 
back from the battleship, and the bright new 
uniform was folded away, never to be worn 
again. 

That man-of-war weighed Anchor and sailed 
out to sea without a certain lad who, with a 
breaking heart, beheld his own radiant future 
vanishing with it. It left George Washington 
to a life as gloomj'' and dismal as only a disap- 
pointed boy's future can look — for reasons 
which their friend maintained were *' trifling 

79 



The Story of Young 

objections, such as a fond, unthinking mother 
habitually suggests." 

It was a noble sacrifice, the crushing of his 
owTi heart to save his mother's. She must have 
referred to such memories as this when, at the 
height of his brilliant career, she said of her 
son, ''George has always been a good boy, and 
I am sure he will do his duty." 

That was the true knighting of a hero. 



CHAPTER V 



The Fairfax Family 



After his giving up going to sea Mary Wash- 
ington allowed George to spend most of his time 
at Mount Vernon, where Lawrence engaged 
several tutors that the lad might keep on with 
the studies he liked. Although he did not wish 
George to become a professional surveyor, as 
that would not be considered as respectable as 
the life of a planter, he allowed him to drown his 
disappointment, as far as possible, by studying 

80 



George Washington 

under the direction of James Genn, the licensed 
surveyor of Westmoreland County. 

George's practical progress in this line is 
shown in several plots and drawings, still pre- 
served, of actual surveys on the Mount Vernon 
estate made when he was only fifteen years of 
age. 

About this time George made the following 
entry in his expense account: 

''To cash pd y^ Musick Master 
for my Entrance 3/9'^ 

This music teacher could not have been a pri- 
vate tutor, or Lawrence would have paid the fee, 
as it would have amounted to a great deal more 
than 3 shillings and 9 pence. As Washington 
never showed special ability in music, it is likely 
that he entered the neighborhood singing school 
for the fun of it. He probably sat there evening 
after evening, listening to ''y^ Musick Master" 
talk about quavers and semiquavers, wishing all 
the while that he only dared to ask one young 
lady if he might ride home with her. Even then 
he would rather face a loaded cannon than one 
little "battery of bright eyes!" 

81 

6^U'asIiington. 



The Story of Young 

After he became famous some one started the 
story that Washington was a skillful flute player 
(as President Jefferson was an expert violin- 
ist), but it was not true, for he was never a per- 
former on any musical instrument. 

Four miles below Mount Vernon was *'Bel- 
voix," one of the most elegant estates in all Vir- 
ginia, commanding a fine view of the Potomac. 
It had been the home of Amie Fairfax, now Mrs. 
Lawrence Washington. The Hon. William 
Fairfax, the proprietor of "Belvoir," was a 
courtly English gentleman. He had been gov- 
ernor of the island of New Providence, one of 
the West Indies, and a collector of customs in 
New England. 

Wealthy, cultivated, and hospitable, the Fair- 
faxes were as popular as any of the ''First Fam- 
ilies of Virginia." The Lees, the Masons, the 
Byrds, the Carys, and others came often to visit 
them, and they sometimes entertained distin- 
guished guests from "home,'* as England was 
called. Lawrence Washington, by his marriage 
to their daughter, was now a member of the 
Fairfax family There was a son, George Fair- 
fax, several years older than George Washing- 
ton. Between these two Georges a friendship 

82 



George Washington 

sprang up which lasted through life, even after 
they were widely separated in opinions and pa- 
triotism. George Fairfax soon married one of 
the Miss Carys and long afterward went to live 
in England to avoid the War of the Revo- 
lution. 

It was on an autumn day, bright and clear, 
that George saw, for the first time, a certain 
elderly gentleman riding enthusiastically after 
the dogs in a grand fox-hunt. He was tall and 
thin, with a ruddy face, and bent forward over 
the pommel of his saddle with the intense, eager 
expression which near-sighted people often have. 
He wore a green hunting- jacket, buckskin rid- 
ing-breeches, and top-boots. His gray hair was 
waving in the wind from under his black velvet 
cap. 

After the hunting party had dashed past with 
a great hue and cry, George asked the name of 
the distinguished stranger. He was told, what 
he had already inferred, that it was Thomas, the 
sixth Earl of Fairfax, descended from the fa- 
mous Fairfax in Cromwell's army, cousin of the 
owner of ^'Belvoir," and proprietor of an im- 
mense tract of land in Virginia, covering about 
one-fifth of the present State. The Earl of 

83 



The Story of Young 

Fairfax was the first *'real lord" George Wash- 
ington ever saw. 

When he was introduced to his lordship, the 
old nobleman sympathized with the boy in his 
shyness. Although he himself was in his sixtieth 
year, a graduate of Oxford, a member of the 
fashionable set in London society, a friend of 
Addison and other great English authors, and 
had even wiitten for The Spectator, that liter- 
ary magazine of the age, Lord Fairfax had 
never been able to conquer his own diffidence be- 
fore strangers. 

Indeed, it was because he was weary of Lon- 
don life and society that he had come to visit his 
cousin and to seek "a lodge in some vast wilder- 
ness" on his own estate. As soon as he could he 
built a hunting lodge, which he called "Green- 
way Court," in the lovely Shenandoah Valley. 

From the very first, Lord Fairfax took an in- 
terest in young George. It was not long before 
the lad was in^dted to join in a fox hunt. Being 
a daring and skillful rider, he enjoyed the sport 
immensely. This made another bond of sym- 
pathy, and the earl and the Washington boy 
were often seen riding across country together, 
sometimes pell-mell, in an exciting chase, and 

84 



George Washington 

somecimes returning leisurely, side by side, 
along the road to ''Belvoir." The neighbors 
began to smile and wonder what the great Eng- 
lish lord could see in a big, awkward fellow like 
the Widow Washington's son. *' There go six- 
teen and sixty again," they would say, *' racing 
and chasing, and trying to break their precious 
necks!" 

George was already glad that he had been 
obliged to write down all those *' Rules of Civil- 
ity" at Mr. Marye's, for he had occasion to prac- 
tise many of them while in the company of this 
English *^ gentleman of the old school." But he 
had the kindness of heart, which is the founda- 
tion of true politeness. He was never ^ ^for- 
ward," and he was incapable of taking advan- 
tage of his lordship 's friendship. When the earl 
asked questions and seemed to wish it, George 
talked as well as he could; when his elderly 
comrade was disposed to talk, the lad listened 
deferentially — but the two often rode many a 
mile together without either of them uttering a 
word. 

The lord and the lad soon became the best of 
friends. You can tell what a man or a boy really 
is while at play — even better than while work- 

85 



The Story of Young 

ing with him. He is thrown off his guard dur- 
ing the excitement of the game, and reveals his 
real self. 

If he is selfish, overbearing, mean or tricky, 
he is sure to betray it without knowing. If he 
is modest, honest, fair and square, he lets you 
see that just as unconsciously. There is a kind 
of undress, or throwing off restraint in most 
sports that shows out the underlying character. 

Therefore, the old earl, keen, observing, ex- 
perienced, looked young George through and 
through while they were out hunting together. 
He saw that the boy's politeness was not a mere 
*' polish" or ''veneer," but that he was sound aU 
the way through to his heart of oak. Any one 
could easily see that George was a heroic horse- 
man and true sportsman, but the nobleman saw 
much beneath the surface that made him say to 
himself, ''I like that lad!" 

Lord Fairfax was a silent man in company, 
and often moody and morose, staying in his 
room a great deal of the time. The family felt 
sorry for him, for they knew he had suffered a 
deep disappointment which had made him turn 
against society in general. He began to invite 
George into his den where he smoked and talked 

86 



George Washington 

about books and the affairs of the world. He 
could converse freely enough when alone with 
his young friend, and his advice and example 
proved a most valuable part of George's prepa- 
ration for his great future. 

The English nobleman did not agree with the 
Washington brothers that a poor Virginia 
planter was more respectable than a good sur- 
veyor, and he encouraged the youth, in a very 
practical way, to keep on with his work with Mr. 
Genn. 

He suggested the best books to read and, be- 
ing an accomplished writer, showed George how 
to express himself on paper, in a simple, direct 
and dignified maimer. In this way Lord Fair- 
fax did more toward the education of Washing- 
ton than any of the boy's teachers. 

The other members of the Fairfax family 
were quite as fond of George as their lordly rela- 
tive seemed to be. Anne, Lawrence's wife, was 
almost as devoted to him as Lawrence himself. 
Hospitable *' Bel voir" was the fourth home that 
George had thrown open to him — besides his 
mother's, Austin's, and Mount Vernon — all 
which argued well for that youth's sterling char- 
acter and agreeable disposition. 

87 



The Story of Young 

In the last year of his life, after he had been 
President when "Bel voir" had been burned 
down, and his friend George Fairfax had been 
dead a dozen years, the aged Washington wrote 
to Mrs. George Fairfax, one of the Miss Carys 
of his boyhood days, telling her of some of the 
great events of his later life, and closed his let- 
ter with these words : 

"None of these events, nor all of them 
put together, have been able to eradi- 
cate from my mind the recollection of 
those happy moments — the happiest of 
my life — which I have enjoyed in your 
company at 'Belvoir.' " 

GEORGE TRIES TO WRITE POETRY 

George's shyness in the presence of ladies did 
not keep him from thinking he was in love with 
several of them. It was the fashion, then, for 
young men to profess to be distracted and to 
talk to their friends about their great love for 
certain fair ones, whom they called their "Dul- 
cineas'' or "Fidelias" 

Instead of putting on their armor and riding 
forth to do deeds of valor for their lady loves, 
as did the knights of old, they sighed at home 
and tried to write poetry about their overpow- 

88 



George Washington 

ering devotion. Of course, George showed some 
of the sjTuptoms of the love-disease which 
seemed to have attacked manv of the older 
youth. He wrote to his cousin, *' Robin" : 

"My place of residence is at present 
at his lordship's where I might, was my 
heart disengag'd, pass the time very 
pleasantly as there's a very agreeable 
young lady lives in the same house 
(Colo. George Fairfax's Wife's Sister) 
but, as that's only adding fuel to fire, it 
makes me the more uneasy, for by often 
and unavoidably being in company with 
her revives my former passion for your 
Lowland Beauty, whereas was I to live 
more retired from young women, I 
might in some measure alleviate my 
sorrows by burying that chaste and 
troublesome passion in the grave of 
oblivion, and an eternal forgetful- 
ness" — 

and so on! 

George finally tells his friend that if he 
should make known his love to the lady herself 
he would ''only get a denial which would be only 
adding grief to uneasiness.'* 

89 



The Story of Young 

George seems never to have mentioned who 
the * Rowland beauty" was. Various young 
ladies have been pointed out as the boy's mys- 
terious charmer, but they are merely guesses. 
There is a tradition that she was a belle of West- 
moreland County, not far from the Oak Grove 
School. If so, that may have been the reason he 
was called home from Austin's before he was 
through Mr. Williams's instruction. A boy of 
fourteen was entirely too young to be mooning 
over 'Rowland beauties" instead of his lessons. 

It is believed by many that this girl was a 
Miss Lucy Grymes, who was afterward married 
to George's friend, Richard Henry Lee, the 
''Dickey" to whom he wrote about the elephant 
and whip-top before he was ten. If so, she be- 
came the mother of "Light Horse Harry" Lee, 
a gallant young officer in the Revolution, who 
was the father of General Robert E. Lee. 

Among other symptoms of the boyish ailment, 
George took to writing what he called poetry, 
which he copied into "The Young Man's Com- 
panion." It proves that the Washington boy 
was not a poetic genius. After he grew to be a 
man he really fell in love. Then he did not write 
verses about the lady, nor tell everybody his sub- 

90 



George Washington 

lime heartache. He was content to inform the 
lady herself what he thought of her, in plain, 
sober prose. This evidently pleased her better 
than the following crude and laborious love- 
lines, found written in among his arithmetic 
tables and cash accounts, could ever have done : 

*'0h ye gods! why should my poor re- 
sistless heart 
Stand to oppose thy might and 
Power ? 
At last surrender to Cupid's feather 'd 
dart 
And now lies bleeding every hour 
For her that's pitiless of my grief and 
woes 
And will not on me Pity take ; 
He sleeps amongst my most inveterate 
foes 
And with gladness never wish to 
to wake, etc. ' ' 

George doubtless thought he knew the mean- 
ing of all this! It shows, at least, his restless, 
though not unhappy, state of mind. He must 
have copied and patched parts of it together 
with some one's help, for it is spelled more cor- 
rectly than most of his writing at this age. 

91 



The Story of Young 

There were, apparently, other *' beauties'^ to 
whom he thought it worth while to dedicate dif- 
ferent lines, but filled with the same allusions 
to *^ Cupid's darts" and "love's pains." The 
following is an acrostic in which the first letter 
of each line, read downward, spells the lady's 
name, "F-R-A-N-C-E-S A-L-E-X-A"— which 
may have been meant for a Miss Alexander, who 
lived not far from Mount Vernon. 

It is not known whether he ever finished this, 
for the next leaf in his memorandum book is 
missing. Poor George seems to have had double 
difficulties, with the initials at one end of the 
lines and the rhymes at the other : 

"From your bright sparkling eyes I was 

undone ; 
Rays, you have ; more transparent than 

the sun. 
Amidst its glory in the rising day 
None can you equal in your bright 

array ; 
Constant in your calm and unspotted 

mind; 
Equal to all, but will to none prove 

kind. 
So knowing, seldom one so young, 

you'll find. 

92 



George Washington 

Ah! woe^s me, that I should love and 
conceal 

long have I wished, but never dare re- 
veal, 

Even though severely love's pains I 
feel; 

Xerxes that great wasn't free from 
Cupid's dart. 

And all the greatest heroes, felt the 
smart. ' ' 



CHAPTER VI 



George's First Survey and Journal 



George made such progress that Lord Fair- 
fax proposed to send him over the Blue Ridge 
Momitains with Mr. Genu, the licensed sur- 
veyor, and his chum, George Fairfax, then a 
young man of twenty-two, to begin a systematic 
survey of his vast estates. 

This proposal naturally roused the mother's 
opposition, for it would mean a longer separa- 
tion than she liked, and send her boy among 
many dangers, from the savages and the '^squat- 

93 



The Stoiy of Young 

ters" (settlers) on his lordship's land, who 
would regard a survey as a menace from the 
foreign owner of the homes which they called 
their own. Also, the rivers would be swollen in 
the early spring, and the forests abounded in 
wild beasts and rattlesnakes. 

But George's eagerness, backed by the noble- 
man's influence, combined with the fact that the 
youth would begin at once to earn his living, 
seems to have won the consent of the family. 
The brothers, and Virginians in general, clung 
to the old English notion that working for pay, 
no matter how necessary or how liberal, was al- 
most a disgrace to a '* gentleman." 

But George took great satisfaction in his 
ability to do work that was worth a good price. 
It gave him the feeling that he was good for 
something, and a pleasant sense of self-reliance 
and independence. He would enjoy conquering 
the obstacles of the surveyor — rivers, rattle- 
snakes, Indians, surly settlers and all — just as 
he had found satisfaction in mastering untamed 
colts. 

He thought it would be rare fun to go on such 
an adventure into the new country with "the 
other George," and he would be glad indeed to 

94 



George Washington 

work for and to show his gratitude to the Earl 
of Fairfax. 

Besides, his instructor, Surveyor Genn, would 
go with the two youths to direct the expedition, 
which would consist also of several chainmen 
and polemen, or pilots and servants. They were 
all going on horseback, camping out when neces- 
sary, shooting game, and cooking their own 
meals. What his mother and brothers consid- 
ered a hazardous undertaking looked to George, 
in his boyish enthusiasm, like a pleasure excur- 
sion. 

The expedition seemed so important to George 
that he began his first diary as a record of it. 
This journal has been preserved, showing every 
line as the busy boy wrote it down while ''rough- 
ing it,'' little thinking that millions of people 
would read it with deep interest for at least a 
hundred years. It is well that he did not know 
this, for he might have been afraid to write it, 
or if he did venture to jot down each day's do- 
ings, he would not have revealed his real self. 

The young surveyors' line of march was over 
the mountains and down into the fertile valley 
of the river named by the Indians, Shen-an- 
do-ah, ''The Daughter of the Stars," so called, 

95 



The Story of Young 

perhaps, because the stars are reflected in some 
broad, tranquil expanses of that beautiful 
stream. 

Here is about one-half of George's modest 
record of what was really a great adventure, be- 
ginning just four weeks after his sixteenth 
birthday, and lasting one day over a month. He 
made it into a little book and called it : 

a journal of my journ'et over the 

mountains, began friday, the 

11th of march, 1747/8. 

Friday, March 11, 1747/8. Began my 
journey in company with George Fair- 
fax, Esq. "We traveled this day 40 
miles to Mr. George Neville's in Prince 
William County. 

Saturday, March 12th. This morn- 
ing Mr. James Genn, the surveyor, came 
to us. We traveled over the Blue 
Ridge to Capt. Ashby's on the Shenan- 
doah River. Nothing remarkable hap- 
pened. 

Sunday, March 13th. Rode to his 

lordship's quarter. About 4 miles 

higher up the River Shenandoah we 

went through most beautiful groves of 

96 



Georere Washinsrton 



■ir> 



sugar trees, and spent the best part of 
the day in admiring the trees and the 
richness of the land. . . . 

15th. Worked hard till night, and 
then returned. After supper we were 
lighted into a room, and I, not being so 
good. a woodsman as the rest, stripped 
myself very orderly, and went into the 
bed, as they called it, when to my sur- 
prise I found it to be nothing but a little 
straw matted together without sheet or 
anything else, but only one threadbare 
blanket. ... I was glad to get up 
and put on my clothes, and lie as my 
companions did. 

Had we not been very tired, I am sure 
we should not have slept much that 
night. I made a promise to sleep so no 
more, choosing rather to sleep in the 
open air before a fire. 

18th. We traveled to Thomas Ber- 
wick's on the Potomac, where we found 
the river exceedingly high, by reason of 
the great rains that had fallen in the 
Alleghanies. They told us it would not 
be fordable for several days, it being 
now six feet higher than usual, and ris- 
ing. 

We agreed to stay till Monday. We 
this day called to see the famed Warm 
97 

f— Washington, 



The Story of Young 

Springs. We camped out in the field 
this night. 

20th. Finding the river not much 
abated, we in the evening swam our 
horses over to the Maryland side. 

2lst. We went over in a canoe and 
traveled up the Maryland side all day, 
in a continued rain . . . about 40 
miles from the place of starting in the 
morning, and over the worst road, I be- 
lieve, that ever was trod by man or 
beast. 

23d. Rained till about 2 o'clock and 
then cleared, when we were greatly sur- 
prised at the sight of more than thirty 
Indians coming from war with only one 
scalp. . . . 

After clearing a large space and mak- 
ing a great fire in the middle, the In- 
dian men seated themselves around it 
and the speaker made a grand speech, 
telling them in what mamier they were 
to dance. After he had finished, the 
best dancer jmnped up as one awaked 
from sleep, and ran and jumped about 
the ring in the most comical manner. 
He was followed by the rest. 

They began their music which was 
performed with a pot half full of water 
and a deerskin stretched tight over it, 
98 



George Washington 

and a gourd with some shot in it to 
rattle, and a piece of horse's tail tied to 
it to make it look fine. 

One person kept rattling and another 
drumming all the while they were danc- 
ing. . . . 

26th. Traveled up to Solomon 
Hedge's, Esquire, one of his majesty's 
justices of the peace in the County of 
Frederick, w^here we camped. 

When we came to supper there was 
neither a knife on the table, nor a fork 
to eat with, but, as good luck w^ould have 
it, we had knives of our own. 

29th. This morning went out and 
surveyed five hundred acres of land. 
Shot two wild turkeys. 

30th. Began our intended business 
of laying off lots. 

April 2d. A blowing, rainy night. 
Our straw, upon which we were lying 
took fire, but I was luckily preserved by 
one of our men awaking when it was 
aflame. We have run off four lots this 
day. 

4th. This morning Mr. Fairfax left 
us, with the intention of going down to 
the mouth of the river. We surveyed 
two lots, and were attended with a great 
company of people, men, women, and 
99 



The Story of Young 

children, who followed us through the 
woods, showing their antic tricks. 
They seemed to be as ignorant a set of 
people as the Indians. They would 
never speak English, and when spoken 
to, they all spoke Dutch. This day our 
tent was blown down by the violence of 
the wind. . . . 

7th. This morning one of our men 
killed a mid turkey that weighed 
twenty pounds. We surveyed fifteen 
hundred acres of land, and returned to 
Van Meter's about one o'clock. 

I took my horse and went up to see 
Mr. Fairfax. We slept in Cassey's 
house, which was the first night I had 
slept in a house since we came to the 
Branch. 

8th. We breakfasted at Cassey's, 
and rode do\\^l to Van Meter's to get 
our company together, which when we 
had accomplished, we rode down below 
the Trough to lay off lots there. . . . 

We camped in the woods, and after 
we had pitched our tent, and made a 
large fire, we pulled out our knapsacks 
to recruit ourselves. Every one was his 
own cook. Our spits were forked 
sticks ; our plates were large chips. As 
for dishes we had none. 
100 



George Washington 

12th. Mr. Fairfax got safe home, and 
I to my brother's house at Mount 
Vernon, which concludes my journal. 

This was a plain, matter-of-fact account, for 
a boy of sixteen, of a series of adventures that 
George had a right to brag about, but he was not 
that kind of a boy. 

He recorded things against himself, his mis- 
haps and shortcomings as a woodsman or hunter, 
gravely writing down one night that he had 
shot at two wild turkeys and missed them both ! 
There was at least one adventure he might have 
mentioned if he had not been too modest, but 
the story of it was afterward told by another 
member of the little expedition. 

Mr. Genn, who during previous surveys had 
come to know man}^ of the Indians, put the rest 
of the party on their guard against a burly chief, 
Big Bear, who was very vain of the strength of 
his hands, and took cruel delight in crushing the 
hand of an unwary white man, while shaking it, 
until the '^paleface'' cried out with the pain. 

When Big Bear came and extended his 
treacherous hand to George to shake, that youth 
innocently, seized it, and, by a trick he had 

101 



The Story of Young 

learned, wrung it so that the astonished savage 
roared out, while the bystanders, both red and 
white, danced with delight to see that wily In- 
dian caught in his own trap. 



CHAPTER VII 



A Boy No Longer 



The first thing George Washington did on his 
return from his survejdng trip beyond the Blue 
Ridge was to report to his employer, Lord Fair- 
fax, who was still at '^Belvoir." The earl was 
greatly pleased with the boy's diary and his fur- 
ther report of his work. As a great landed pro- 
prietor he was able to recommend George and 
secure other surveying for the lad to do, which 
sent him out into the wilderness again and again 
on expeditions of which he was sole surveyor 
and manager. 

After Lord Fairfax's lodge, Greenway Court, 
was erected, it became a kind of resting place 
for George in the intervals of his work over the 

102 



George Washington 

mountains. Here the old nobleman ordered a 
room always kept in readiness for his comrade. 
''George's room connected with his lordship's 
library, for the old gentleman made constant 
companions of his books during the many lonely 
years he lived in the valley of the Shenandoah. 

The pages of George's memorandum book, 
now yellow with age, show the taste and influ- 
ence of the older man on his young friend's 
reading in history and current literature. 

Here and there in that most uncommon 
''commonplace book" are records, almost as 
short as the cash entries found on the same 
pages, such as "Read to the reign of King 
John;" and, "In The Spectator, read to 143;" 
then, as a sign of at least one friendly discus- 
sion, this query: "What's the noblest passion of 
the mind?" 

Also, as an evidence of his early acquired 
habit of "putting things down," is the memo- 
randum: "The regulator of my watch now is 
4 m: and over the fifth from the slow end." 

In spite of the older companion's attempts to 
lead George's mind off his early love affairs — 
for Lord Fairfax was almost a "woman hater" 
— the lad still tried to write a love ditty now 

103 



The Story of Young 

and then, until he must have become disgusted 
with his own sickly efforts. 

His memorandum book also shows that he was 
beginning to care about his personal appear- 
ance, for he records that he carried with him 
seven caps, seven waistcoats and four neck- 
cloths! This shows that he must have spent 
much of his time at Mount Vernon, ''Belvoir,'' 
and the other hospitable homes where he always 
found a cordial welcome. He did not need all 
those waistcoats and neckcloths surveying 
among the Indians and Dutch squatters. While 
working in the wilderness he dressed very much 
as the Indians did, wearing moccasins, leggings, 
and the like. 

There was the greatest contrast possible be- 
tween George's life among savages and that he 
led when he **came out" into civilization. He 
made Mount Vernon his headquarters, but went 
as often as business and social engagements 
would permit, to visit his mother and the 
younger children. 

As if to compel his young brother to follow in 
his own footsteps, Captain Lawrence employed 
two acquaintances of the Spanish War, who 
seem to have been hanging about the wealthy re- 

104 




YOUXG WASHINGTON REPORTS TO HIS EMPLOYER, 
LORD FAIRFAX. 



George Washington 

tired officer ^s estate, to give George military in- 
struction. 

One of these was a wiry little Dutchman 
named Van Braam, who trained him in fencing 
and sword practice. The other, Adjutant Muse, 
taught general military tactics. Each of these 
men reappeared and cut a strange figure in 
George Washington's career a few years later. 

There is something nobly sad in the yearning 
of Lawrence Washington over his youngest 
brother with the almost passionate unselfishness 
of a dying father. His lung trouble was con- 
stantly growing worse. Several children born 
to him and his wife had sickened and died. This, 
with his own failing health, must have convinced 
the proprietor of Mount Vernon that George 
would soon inherit it, and his other interests, as 
provided by their father's will and his own. 

Lawi'ence had shown himself to be a man, in 
spite of his ill health, of great ability and lofty 
purposes. Brave, generous, cultivated, he stood 
high in the Virginia of his day ; but when he saw 
that he would soon have to leave his beautiful, 
devoted wife; his fine estate; his delightful 
friends; and the great affairs in which he was 
deeply interested, he clung to George with 

105 



The Story of Young 

strong affection and an inspiring hope that the 
youth would carry on the work he himself had 
longed so earnestly to do. 

He was president of the council, or board of 
directors, of a syndicate known as the Ohio Com- 
pany, organized for the purpose of settling and 
trading along the Ohio River. 

For years this great company's operations 
had been hampered by the encroachments of the 
French, coming up from the lower Mississippi 
and down from Canada and the Great Lakes, 
bribing and instigating the Indians, everywhere 
they could, against the English. Reports kept 
coming in of French forts and settlements upon 
the Ohio Company's territory, and now and then 
a frontier family, or a whole settlement of Eng- 
lish, was massacred by the Indians. 

Christopher Gist, a surveyor, scout, guide, and 
prospector, was sent out by the company to make 
a survey of lands south of the Ohio, and bring 
in a report of the state of affairs in that part of 
the country. 

Lawrence Washington seems to have been one 
of the few men in the American colonies who 
then foresaw that war was sure to come between 
the English and the French and Indians. 

106 



George Washington 

Manly as George was, he was still too young 
to comprehend the hidden motive beneath all 
that his brother was doing for him, and Law- 
rence was too tender and sympathetic to let the 
dear boy know it yet. 

So the youth entered into the festivities of the 
neighborhood with the same earnestness that he 
showed in his surveying. His diffidence still 
held him back. 

An old Isidy, many years afterward, in speak- 
ing of these days of her youth and Washington's 
together, said: **I used to wish that he would 
talk more!'' 

George seems to have had little sympathy with 
the life of the young men of the surrounding 
families, as he grew to young manhood himself. 
His surveying and hunting with Lord Fairfax 
seemed to satisfy his craving for outdoor amuse- 
ment. He seemed to practice unconsciously one 
of the quaint preachments dictated to him by 
Rector Marye, in his ^* Rules of Behaviour": 
**Let your recreations be manfull not sinfull." 

The '^ younger sons" of the Virginia gentry, 
without either army or navy to enter, as there 
were in England, and without high aims in life, 
gave themselves over to drinking, gambling, 

107 



The Story of Young 

carousing, horse jockeying, cock fighting and the 
like. Growing up in idleness among slaves, con- 
victs, sailors, and adventurers, made many of 
them coarse, vulgar, and brutal in their tastes 
and habits. These worthless young men formed 
a low-lived class, but counted themselves among 
the Virginia *' gentlemen" who at first looked 
down on George Washington because he was an 
independent, self-respecting, honorable, but 
wage-earning surveyor ! 

Little did young Washington care what such 
idle fellows thought of him or his work. He had 
come up with the same surroundings, but he 
had learned to work; he was happy in doing 
something worth while, and being well paid 
for it. 

The surveys he made in those early days have 
stood the rigid tests of many generations. Some 
of his lines became important boundaries over 
which there were years of dispute in the Vir- 
ginia courts of law. 

This was not because he was a talented or 
brilliant youth, but because he went to work 
with all his might, faithfully, patiently, perse- 
veringly running every line true while he was 
at it, -without slighting or shirking any detail, 

108 



George Washington 

however minute. His strict sense of honor 
made him as afraid of running a false line as of 
telling any other kind of a lie. 

Honest, persistent industry was the only 
genius George Washington knew. But he 
learned all he could from anybody or anything 
that could teach him — even from the poor, de- 
spised Indian. He did not believe that saying of 
the settlers: ''The only good Indian is a dead 
Indian. " He did not treat them as mere painted 
savages, but made friends among them — and 
the Indians ''met him half way." 

They took pride in telling him the secrets of 
the forests and instructed him in their arts and 
crafts. They taught him to be a shrewd and 
skillful woodsman and he gained valuable knowl- 
edge of their wild life. He picked up all he 
could of their speech and learned their sign 
language. 

They were glad to tell him who their friends 
and enemies were among the neighboring and 
more distant tribes — the Shawnees, Delawares, 
Susquehannas, and that great confederation 
known as the Five Nations. 

When he came to a rushing stream which he 
dared not attempt to ford, they showed him how, 

109 



The Story of Young 

by carrying a heavy stone, he could keep a firm 
footing while he waded across, shoulder deep, in 
safety. 

And the Indians, in their simplicity, saw be- 
fore even the white men realized it, that this 
big awkv/ard youth was no common '^paleface." 
George Washington acquired that which was 
very valuable in his private affairs. He ob- 
served ^'the lay of the land," the values of dif- 
ferent soils, and of various kinds of standing 
timber when cut up into lumber. In this way 
he learned where to invest his money when he 
had money to invest. 

All this knowledge became useful to him 
sooner than he had dreamed, and those gam- 
bling, grumbling young men began to wonder 
why a young fellow who appeared so ordinary 
could leave them far behind in the grand race of 
life. 

They thought he must be inspired or exercised 
an uncanny influence over the Indians, but the 
art he used was the more marvelous magic of 
faithful, good-natured common sense. His wild 
life at this time is outlined in a letter he wrote 
from the woods to the friend he had addressed 
eight or nine years earlier as *' Dickey": 

110 



George Washington 
*^Dear Richard; 

''The receipt of your kind favor of 
the 2d instant afforded me unspeak- 
able pleasure, as it convinces me that I 
am still in the memory of so worthy a 
friend — a friendship I shall be ever 
proud of increasing. Yours gave me 
the more pleasure, as I received it 
among barbarians and an uncouth set 
of people. 

' ' Since you received my letter of Oc- 
tober last, I have not slept above three 
or four nights in a bed, but, after walk- 
ing a good deal all da}^, I have lain down 
before the fire upon a little hay, straw, 
fodder, or a bearskin, whichever was 
to be had, with man, wife, and children, 
like dogs and cats ; and happy is he who 
gets the berth nearest the fire! 

''Nothing would make it pass oft 
tolerably but a good reward. A doub- 
loon is my constant gain every day that 
the weather will permit of my going 
out, and sometimes six pistoles. 

"The coldness of the weather will not 
permit of my making a long stay, as 
the lodging is rather too cold for the 
time of year. I have never had my 
clothes oft*, but have lain and slept in 
111 



The Story of Young 

them, except the few nights I have been 
in Frederickstown. " 



As a pistole was about $3.90, George was earn- 
ing more than $7 a day and sometimes $20 a day, 
which was very good pay for a boy of sixteen, 
when a dollar would buy much more, or "went 
farther" than a dollar will to-day. 

This suggests the story of a witty senator who 
was visiting Mount Vernon, not many years ago, 
and being shown where Washington once stood 
and performed the almost impossible feat of 
throwing a silver dollar across the broad Po- 
tomac, he exclaimed : 

"Yes, but you must remember how much far- 
ther a dollar went in those days!" 

Some of the surveyors in old Virginia had 
brought their profession into discredit by ac- 
cepting bribes to run certain lines at a very little 
out of true at the beginning, and making a dif- 
ference of miles in the final survey. The land- 
owners and settlers among whom George Wash- 
ington went about his work, found that, over 
and above his industry and tact, he could not be 
bullied or bribed. 

Lord Fairfax, well knowing this, and being 

112 



George Washington 

migntily pleased with George's signal success, 
arranged to have the boy appointed the official 
surveyor of Culpepper County, which was a part 
of his own inheritance, and so named in honor 
of his mother. 

But George's appointment was not a mere 
matter of influence, for he had to pass a rigid 
examination at William and Mary College, at 
Williamsburg, the Colonial capital, before re- 
ceiving, when but seventeen, the following li- 
cense, which he had a good right to look upon as 
a kind of ticket of admission from boyhood to 
young manhood : 

^'George WasJiington, Gent,, pro- 
duced a commission from the President 
and Master of William and Mary Col- 
leg e, appointing Mm to he a Surveyor 
of this County^ tvhich was read, and 
thereupon he tooh the usual oaths to his 
Majesty's person and government, and 
took and siihscrihed to the abjuration 
oath and text, and tooh the oath of a 
surveyor according to law/' 



113 

8 — Washington. 



The Story of Young 



CHAPTER VIII 



Young Major Washington 



THE ONLY TIME GEORGE EVER LEFT HIS NATIVE LAND 

The life of the seventeen-year-old County 
Surveyor went on as before. His pilgrimages 
into the wilderness were made at wider inter- 
vals, for his brother needed him more. Law- 
rence's failing health made it necessary for 
George to assume a general oversight of the 
great estate and its many interests, milling, fish- 
ing and manufacturing, besides the work on an 
ordinary farm or plantation. 

His brother had been pleased with Lord Fair- 
fax's attentions and was proud of George's suc- 
cess in surveying. More than that, the lad had 
shown that, while his family would gladly have 
made life easy and pleasant for him, he was de- 
termined to make his own way in the world. A 
boy may inherit property or have a fortune 
given to him, but he has to earn success. This is 
what George had shown a disposition to do, and 

114 



George Washington 

no boy of seventeen, even of greater ability, ever 
achieved higher success than the Widow Wash- 
ington's oldest son. 

It is too often asserted that Washington's way 
was opened for him through life, but this was 
not true. He had to work hard and long to win 
his great success. 

George, on his part, was beginning to see the 
motive of Lawrence's keeping him at Mount 
Vernon, and that the eldest brother's opposition 
to his surveying was not merely because it was 
not thought respectable. He saw that Law- 
rence's health was going from bad to worse, and 
he and Anne, the sick man's wife, persuaded him 
to try the already famous warm springs of Vir- 
ginia. 

Lawrence returned from the springs as weak 
and wan as he went, and the doctors advised 
him to take the ocean voyage to England. This 
did not benefit him. As a last resort he decided 
to spend the winter in Barbadoes. 

Between the journeys in his vain search for 
health Lawrence was planning for the future of 
his little family, which consisted of his wife, 
and infant daughter. He resigned as an 
officer in the Colonial militia and recom- 

115 



The Story of Young 

mended his younger brother for the vacancy. 

Though George was but nineteen, he was 
chosen district Adjustant-General, with the rank 
of major, and a salary amounting to seven hun- 
dred and fifty dollars a year. 

So, while he was continuing his broadsword 
practice with Van Braam and his military 
studies under Adjutant Muse, the young man 
had to make tours through several neighboring 
counties, inspecting drills, arms and accoutre- 
ments of the Colonial militia. These important 
excursions, in addition to his duties as manager 
at Mount Vernon, and his occasional expeditions 
into Culpepper County, as official surveyor, and 
farther over the Ridge, kept him very busy, 
indeed. 

All his military and other duties had to give 
way to the closer obligations of a brother's affec- 
tion, for Lawrence wanted only George to go 
with him on the voyage to the West Indies. 

The Washington brothers sailed the 28th of 
September, 1751, for the little island of Barba- 
does, the most easterly of the Lesser Antilles, 
which form the curved enclosure of the Carrib- 
bean Sea on the east. Li these days of ** ocean 
greyhounds" which cross the Atlantic in five 

116 



George Washington 

days, or even less, it seems incredible that they 
were five weary weeks on their way to those out- 
lying islands. 

George kept a record of this journey, the only 
one he ever made out of his own country. Even 
Barbadoes was not a foreign island, as it was 
then, as now, a British possession. 

That little green island, surrounded by coral 
reefs, must have looked beautiful to the tired 
voyagers as they drew near, almost in sight of 
the northern shore line of South America, and 
entered the harbor at Bridgetown, its one city 
and its capital, for the island itself is only twenty 
miles long and fourteen wide. The following 
passages are from George's journal, beginning 
with their reception by Major Clark, the gover- 
nor of the island, and describing the hospitali- 
ties tendered them during their short stay there : 

Nov. 4, 1751. This morning received 
a card from Major Clark, welcoming us 
to Barbadoes; with an invitation to 
breakfast and dine with him. We went 
— myself with some reluctance, as the 
small-pox was in his family. We were 
received in the most kind and friendly 
manner by him. . . . After drinking 
117 



The Story of Young 

tea were again invited to Mr. Carter's, 
and desired to make his house ours till 
we could provide lodgings agreeable to 
our wishes, which offer we accepted. 

5th. Early this morning came Dr. 
Hilary, an eminent physician recom- 
mended by Major Clark, to pass his 
opinion on my brother's disorder, 
which he did in a favorable light, giv- 
ing great assurance that it was not so 
fixed but that a cure might be effectu- 
ally made. 

In the cool of the evening we rode 
out, accompanied by Mr. Carter, to seek 
lodgings in the country, as the doctor 
advised, and were perfectly enraptured 
with the beautiful prospects which 
every side presented to our view — the 
fields of cane, corn, fruit trees, etc., in a 
delightful green. We returned without 
accomplishing our intentions. 

7th. Dined with Major Clark, and by 
him w^as introduced to the Surveyor 
General and the Judges who likewise 
dined there. In the evening they com- 
plaisantly accompanied us in another 
excursion into the country to choose 
lodgings. We pitched on the house of 
Captain Croftan, commander of 
James's Fort. He was desired to come 
118 



George Washington 

to town next day to propose his terms. 
We returned by the way of Needham's 
Fort. 

8th. Came Captain Croftan with his 
proposals, which, though extravagantly 
dear, my brother was obliged to accept. 

In the evening we removed some of 
our things up and went ourselves. It 
is very pleasantly situated near the sea, 
and about a mile from town. The pros- 
pect is extensive by land and pleasant 
by sea, as we command a view of Car- 
lisle Bay and the sliipping. 

9th. Received a card from Major 
Clark, inviting us to dine with him at 
Judge Maynard 's to-morrow. He had a 
right to ask, being a member of a club 
called the "Beefsteak and Tripe,'' in- 
stituted by himself. 

10th. We were genteely received by 
Judge Maynard and his lady, and 
agreeably entertained by the company. 

• • • 

After dinner there was the greatest 
collection of fruit set on the table that I 
have yet seen — the granadilla, sapa- 
dilla, pomegranate, sweet orange, 
watermelon, forbidden fruit, apples, 
guavas, etc., etc. 

119 



The Story of Young 

We received invitations from every 
gentleman there, . . . but above all 
the invitation of Mr. Maynard was most 
kind and friendly. He desired and even 
insisted, as well as his lady, on our com- 
ing to spend some weeks with him, and 
promised nothing should be wanting to 
render our stay agreeable. 

My brother promised he would ac- 
cept the invitation as soon as he should 
be a little disengaged from the doctors. 

15th. Was treated with a ticket to 
see a play of *' George Barnwell" acted. 
The character of Barnwell and several 
others were said to be well performed. 

• • • 

17th. Was strongly attacked witH 
the small-pox. Sent for Dr. Lanahan, 
whose attendance was very constant till 
my recovery and going out, which was 
not till Thursday, the 12th of December. 

December 12th. Went to town and 
called on Major Clark's family, who 
had kindly visited me in my illness, 
and contributed to me all the}^ could in 
sending me the necessaries which the 
disorder required. 

As George had been exposed to small-pox at 

120 



George Washington 

their house on the day after their arrival, it 
seems but natural that the Clarks should have 
'^kindly visited" their victim during his four 
weeks' illness with ^'necessaries." 

Only two nights before he was prostrated he 
w^ent to see the play *' George Barnwell," which 
was, for a hundred years, one of the most pop- 
ular melodramas on the English stage — and ex- 
posed everybody there to small-pox! 

But people were not so careful about con- 
tagious diseases, as in these days of disinfecting, 
fumigating, sterilizing, anti-toxins, and so on. 
They regarded such plagues as *'disi)ensations 
of Providence," instead of being the result of 
recklessness, and even criminal negligence, as 
they are known to be to-day. 

George's comment on the play was character- 
istic. Instead of recording, as he had a right to 
do, that the play was well rendered, or that he 
thought the acting was good, he modestly states 
that several of the characters "were said to he 
well performed!" 

Lawrence did not improve in health as the 
physician had said he would. He must have 
accepted some invitations of hospitable families 
on the island for George's sake. His reply that 

121 



The Story of Young 

he would have the pleasures of further courte- 
sies ''as soon as he should be a little disengaged 
from the doctors," was as plucky as it was 
polite. 

With the feverish restlessness of a consump- 
tive in the last stages of his affliction, Lawrence 
decided to go to Bermuda, as far north as North 
Carolina, and about two-thirds of the way home, 
to see if the cooler climate there would not 
benefit him. Yet he must have realized that he 
was "hoping against hope." 

He sent George back to Mount Vernon to 
bring Anne, his wife, to meet him in Bermuda. 
Here is a part of George's record of his last day 
at Barbadoes. 

December 22d. Took leave of my 
brother, Major Clark, and others, and 
embarked on board the Industry for 
Virginia. Weighed anchor and got out 
of Carlisle Bay about twelve o'clock. 

This plain, unsentimental record of his ex- 
periences on that tropical island sounds tame 
after all these years. Of the six weeks he re- 
mained in Barbadoes nearly four of them were 
spent indoors with a loathsome disease which 

122 



George iWashington 

had been given him along with his welcome to 
the governor's house. His fresh, boyish com- 
plexion was left somewhat pitted, and he wore 
the marks of Major Clark's hospitality to his 
dying day. 

Years afterward, when small-pox was epi- 
demic in his army, General Washington ex- 
pressed himself as glad not to be in danger of 
taking the '* disorder," as a result of this youth- 
ful experience on the island of Barbadoes. 
Most youths of his age would have denounced 
those w^ho had given them the disease, or would 
at least have murmured against their luck, with 
a careful record of the symptoms or disgusting 
details of their sickness, but George expressed 
no resentment, and referred only to the kindness 
of the Clarks to him in his tedious and tantaliz- 
ing illness. 

During his return voyage ^Hhe weather and 
wind" seemed to be the only ^'news of the day." 
It must have been a lonely, dreary Christmas 
and New Year's he spent tossing on the briny 
deep. It was February before he reached Mount 
Vernon with Lawrence's messages to his wife. 
Before they started for Bermuda they received 
a letter from the patient telling them not to come 

123 



The Story of Young 

to him there. He had gone to the more northerly 
island in March and the cooler climate had ag- 
gravated his affliction so that he wrote to them 
to stay where they were, as he was "hurrying 
home to his grave.'' He arrived at Mount Ver- 
non in the spring and died in July, 1752, leav- 
ing a baby daughter, Sarah, heiress of his 
wealth. Two years later, she died, and, as Law- 
rence seems long to have expected, George 
Washington became master of Mount Vernon. 



CHAPTER IX 



The Ohio Company's Troubles with the 
French and Indians 



By the terms of Lawrence Washington's will, 
George was appointed one of several men to see 
that all his wishes were carried out, besides be- 
ing manager of the estate of Mount Vernon. As 
he understood his brother's business better than 
any one else, he became acting executor, al- 
though he was not twenty-one. As he went about 

124 



George Washington 

the sad business he saw, as he never could see 
before, how Lawi'ence had begun long ago to 
plan for them all, and, as so often happens, he 
began really to appreciate his brother's finer 
qualities after he had gone. Washington Irving, 
the historian, and one of the first and best of 
American authors, wrote of this elder brother; 

*'He was a noble-spirited, pure- 
minded, accomplished gentleman; hon- 
ored by the public and beloved by his 
friends. The paternal care ever mani- 
fested by him for his j^outhful brother 
George, and the influence his own char- 
acter and conduct must have had upon 
him in his ductile years, should link 
their memories together in history, and 
endear the name of Lawrence Washing- 
ton to ever}^ American." 

Brother Augustine was also a member of the 
Ohio Company, and Lawi^ence's control of it, 
aside from the money they had invested in the 
enterprise, kept the Washingtons interested in 
its adventures. They were public spirited and 
would naturally have followed the fortunes of 
this colonization scheme for the sake of its bear- 
ing upon the future of the colony. 

125 



The Story of Young 

Besides, their grant covered nearly the whole 
of what is now the State of West Virginia and 
southeastern Ohio, and became a part of the 
*'bone of contention" over which France and 
England soon fought what was known as the 
' ' Seven Years ' War. ' ' 

Christopher Gist had reported that affairs 
along the Ohio were coming rapidly to a crisis. 
He had been instructed by the Ohio Company to 
return, build a fort, and lay out towns beyond 
the Ohio, which he began to do. The Ohio Com- 
pany was to settle one hundred and fifty families 
in the territory granted to them by the king of 
England. 

The English claimed the continent of North 
America by right of discovery. The Cabots and 
others had taken formal possession of all the 
country westward to the Pacific, thinking 
America was an island a few hundred miles 
wide. The only place a white man had ever 
crossed was at the Isthmus of Panama, and 
there it was but fifty miles wide. The French 
scouted such a claim. They had taken posses- 
sion of the waterways, which were most impor- 
tant before the days of railroads. They had 
settled at the mouth of the Mississippi, had gone 

126 



George Wasliiiigtou 

from the Great Lakes to the source of that 
stream, which was called by the Indians, "the 
Father of Waters," and had made settlements 
down through what are now known as Michigan, 
Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana, as the names 
of many cities. La Crosse, Eau Claire, Prairie 
du Chien, La Salle, Joliet, Terre Haute, Vin- 
cennes, and many others, still testify. 

Lake Champlain, and other names in North- 
ern New York show the enterprise of the French, 
whose missionaries were vigilant and whose 
traders formed closer friendships with the In- 
dians than the English did, French pioneers 
often marrying Indian women. 

The French started out to establish a chain of 
forts along the waterways from Lake Erie to 
New Orleans. They had a fort, Presque Isle, 
on Lake Erie, near the site of the present city of 
Erie, Pennsylvania. Only fifteen miles from 
this fort they built another, near the source of 
French Creek. Another at the village of Ve- 
nango where this stream, also called the Venango 
River, flows into the Allegheny. 

These are the first links in a long chain of 
forts which were to extend down the Ohio and 
the Mississippi, and control the water courses 

127 



The Story of Young 

from Lake Erie to the Gulf of Mexico. They be- 
gan establishing trading posts and stockades, 
and sending soldiers and settlers to cover this 
vast expanse of western country and to keep the 
English from extending their power beyond the 
Alleghenies. 

The Indians, seeing that the English claimed 
their country from east to west by right of dis- 
covery, and the French from north to south by 
right of settlement, began to protest against this 
French encroachment, because the French were 
more enterprising and troublesome than the 
English. 

The French had, by preaching and marrying 
into many of the northern tribes, made them 
their friends and allies. These sympathizers 
with the French were called *^ French Indians.'' 

The Ohio tribes were angry with the French 
for trespassing on their land. They went and 
threatened the men at the forts, but the French 
only laughed at them. Then Tanacharisson, 
called the Half King, because he was not the 
highest in authority, but a kind of vice-president 
of a great confederation of tribes, complained at 
the French fort on Lake Erie. He made the fol- 
lowing speech : 

128 



George Washington 

*' Fathers, you are the disturbers of 
the land by building towns and taking 
the country from us by fraud and force. 
We kindled a fire and held a council a 
long time ago at Montreal, where we 
asked you to stay and not to come and 
trespass on our land. I now warn you 
to return to that place, for this land is 
ours. 

**If you had come in a peaceable man- 
ner, like our brothers, the English, we 
would have traded with you as we do 
with them; but joii come and build 
houses on our land, and take it by force ; 
that is what we cannot stand. Both 
you and the English are white. 

*'We live in a country between you 
both ; the land belongs to neither of you. 
The Great Spirit gave it to us to live 
on. So, fathers, I ask you, as I have 
asked our brothers, the English, to with- 
draw, for I will keep you both at arm^s 
length. 

*'The one that pays most attention to 
this request, that is the side we will 
stand by and consider our friends. Our 
brothers, the English, have heard this, 
and I now" come to tell it to you, for I 
am not afraid to order you off this 
land.'^ 

129 

p — Washington. 



The Story of Young 

The French commandant felt safe and sure 
with the i)owerful tribes of '* French Indians," 
so he insulted the Half King by calling him a 
child, for the Indians venerated age, and it was 
a great compliment to any chief to be thought 
very old. He made this scornful reply : 

^' Child, you talk foolishly. You say 
this land belongs to you, there is not the 
black [paring] of my nail yours. It is 
my land, and I will have it, let who will 
stand up against me. I am not afraid 
of flies and mosquitoes, for as such I 
consider the Indians. 

*'I tell you that down the river I will 
go, and build upon it. If blocked up I 
have forces sufficient to burst it open 
and trample down all who oppose me. 
My men are as countless as the sands 
upon the seashore. Therefore, here is 
your wampum ; I fling it at you. ' ' 

When Indians met in council to make any 
agreement, they presented the other party with 
a valuable belt of wampum, or Indian money, 
which they called a '^ speech belt." It was a 
friendly act to accept it. To refuse it meant war, 
and to throw it back in an insulting way, as this 

130 



George Washington 

French commander did, was a challenge to fight 
to the bitter end. 

When the Ohio tribes, Delawares, Shawnees, 
and Mingoes, attempted to form an alliance with 
the Six Nations, the great Indian confederation 
living in what is now New York State, they sent 
a number of chiefs to invite the Six Nations to 
send chiefs to take part in a grand council at 
Logstown, on the Ohio, about fifteen miles from 
the junction of the Allegheny and Monongahela, 
to discuss a treaty with the Governor of Vir-. 
ginia. The haughty chieftains in New York de- 
clined to come, and sent back this sneering 
message : 

*^It is not our custom to meet to treat 
of affairs in the woods and weeds. If 
the Governor of Virginia desires to 
speak with us, and deliver us a present 
from our father [the king of England] 
we will meet him at Albany, where we 
will expect the Governor of New York 
mil be present." 

After all these rebuffs the Half King felt 
obliged to make friends, on the part of the Ohio 
tribes, with the English. He saw that the In- 

131 



The Storj^ of Young 

dians would be the chief sufferers if the French 
and English came to blows over the lands on 
w^hich the red men had been living for ages. He 
thought the English would do his tribes the least 
harm, so, as a choice of evils, he came to them for 
help. He looked upon the matter as did the old 
Delaware chief who came to Mr Gist in the 
Kanawha region and said sadly : 

**Our 'fathers,' the French, claim all 
the land on one side of the Ohio, and 
our 'brothers,' the English, claim all the 
land on the other side — now where does 
the Indians' land lie?" 

The Ohio Company reported the state of af- 
fairs to Robert Dinwiddle, the grasping, obsti- 
nate, narrow-minded man who had been sent by 
the king of England to be Governor of Virginia. 
As the Governor himself was a member of the 
Ohio Company, he saw good reason for sending 
out a commissioner to warn the French trespass- 
ers off the premises claimed by the English. He 
appointed Captain William Trent for this mis- 
sion, which might prove dangerous. Captain 
Trent set out for Logstown, the headquarters of 
the Ohio tribes, with presents of guns, powder, 

132 



Geoi'ffe Washinjrton 



t) 



shot, and clothing to buy the good-will of the 
Indians. Instead of going to the place to which 
he had been sent, Trent marched off in another 
direction to a town at which Gist had been re- 
ceived in a friendly manner. 

On arriving there he found that settlement 
had been attacked and burned, and that the Eng- 
lish traders had either been killed or carried 
away prisoners, and the French flag was floating 
over the charred remains of what had been a 
flourishing trading post. 

This was too much for timid Captain Trent. 
He went home as fast as he could go and re- 
ported to Governor Dinwiddle that the French 
Indians were already on the war path. There- 
fore, it was useless to warn the French off the 
premises when they were ready to fight to prove 
their own right to them. 



133 



The Story of Young 



CHAPTER X 



YouN^G Washington Goes on a Dangerous 

Errand 



Major George Washington was busy as man- 
ager of the Mount Vernon estate, riding twelve 
to fifteen miles every day to superintendent all 
the work that was going on, besides his extra 
duties as chief executor of his brother's will. If 
any one had a good excuse for refusing to take 
outside work upon himself it was he, for surely 
he seemed to have his hands full. 

So he must have been surprised when Gover- 
nor Dinwiddle sent word that he was appointed 
commissioner or envoy to go on an important 
mission for the Colony. Of course, George had 
heard of Captain Trent's failure to give the 
French the Governor's ''notice to quit" the Eng- 
lish territory. If it was a dangerous errand 
when the captain went, it must be doubly 
perilous now. George's youth was against him, 

134 



George Washington 

especially in dealing with the Indians. *'01d 
men for counsel," was an Indian saying. Even 
the French officers would laugh in their sleeves 
at a boy ambassador. 

But George had courage, tact, common sense, 
experience with and knowledge of the Indians' 
ways. The very obstacles that had alarmed Cap- 
tain Trent fired his brave young soldier heart. 
He shared the family's public spirit, and w^as 
ready to do anything he could for his country at 
a moment's notice. So he consented to under- 
take the difficult and dangerous mission. It 
would have been a hard and risky journey 
through the pathless forests, across swollen and 
frozen streams in the dead of winter, without 
the danger of being killed and scalped by In- 
dians already on the warpath. 

George did not suppose the French soldiers 
would enjoy being warned off the premises they 
claimed to have more right to than the English, 
but he said he would go, and do the best he 
could. 

He started from Williamsburg, the capital of 
Virginia, on the 30th of October, 1753, on the 
same day the Governor handed him the letter 
which was to tell the French commander, in po- 

135 



The Story of Young 

lite, indirect language, to leave their posts as 
the}^ had no right there. The young envoy was 
instructed to go first to Logstown, the council 
village of the Ohio Indians, and get some of the 
chiefs to go with him to the French headquar- 
ters. He was to wait there not over a week for 
a reply, to observe and find out all that he could 
while there, and to ask the French to send an 
escort of French back with him. 

Young Washington started off without any 
escort, picking up Van Braam, his old fencing 
master, at Fredericksburg, where he called to 
say good-bye to his mother, who, naturally 
enough, did not approve of their sending her son 
on such a dangerous journey. Van Braam went 
with him as interpreter to the French, though 
he afterward showed that he was not very well 
skilled in that language. At Wills 's Creek (now 
Cumberland) he met Christopher Gist, the guide 
and scout who had long been in the employ of 
the Ohio Company. Here the brave little expe- 
dition was fitted out. John Davidson was en- 
gaged as Indian interpreter, though both 
George and Gist had had experience with sev- 
eral Indian dialects. Four woodsmen went with 
them to drive and take care of the horses and 

136 



George Washington 

provisions. The cavalcade set off on horseback, 
the 11th of November, through rain, sleet, and 
snow, to the nearest point on the Monongahela 
River, at the mouth of Turtle Creek. 

Here the young Major found John Frazier, 
who had been a gunmaster at the trading posts 
of Venango. He had made his escape, though 
other English traders there were captured and 
carried off to Canada. The autumn rains and 
snows had raised the rivers so that Washington 
and his caravan were obliged to swim their 
horses. He decided to send their baggage and 
stores down the Monongahela in a canoe with 
directions to wait for him at the "Fork of the 
Ohio,'^ as the junction of the Monongahela with 
the Allegheny was called. In the diary which 
he kept of this journey he wrote the following 
shrewd observation : 

"As I got down before the canoe I 
spent some time in viewing the rivers, 
and the land at the Fork, which I think 
extremely well situated for a fort, as it 
has the absolute command of both 
rivers, which are a quarter of a mile or 
more across, and run very nearly at 
right angles.'' 

137 



The Story of Yomig 

Not far from this fork dwelt a powerful Dela- 
ware chief named Shingis. The young diplomat 
made him a formal visit, as he had been rather 
unfriendly to the English, and invited him to 
meet the white men and Indians in council at 
Logstown. 

Shingis complied, and when they reached 
Logstown, on the evening of the 24th of Novem- 
ber, they found that Tanacharisson was absent 
at his hunting lodge. Swift runners were sent 
to notify him and other chiefs of a grand council 
at Logstown. 

In the morning four French deserters arrived 
in camp. Washington plied them with ques- 
tions as to the forts, the forces, and the inten- 
tions of the French along the Ohio and Missis- 
sippi as far south as New Orleans, and noted 
down the information they gave him. The Half 
King having arrived during the day, the chiefs 
gravely assembled in the council house. The 
Virginian major presented them with speech 
belts and made an address to them through his 
interpreter. When the English envoy ceased 
speaking the chiefs sat in a solemn circle smok- 
ing silently. After a long while Tanacharisson 
arose and in a flowery harangue assured the 

138 



George Washington 

white ambassadors that they loved the English 
as brothers, and volunteered to fling back 
with words of scorn the speech belts of the 
French. 

The Indians explained, by pulling up imagi- 
nary blankets under their chins as if for the 
night, that it was five or six "sleeps," or days' 
journey, from Logstown to Venango, which had 
been the headquarters of the French command- 
ant. After due deliberation the council decided 
to send three chiefs from as many tribes, as an 
escort, but three days would be necessary to pre- 
pare for the journey. Though the young major 
was impatient at this delay he made no sign, for 
fear of offending the dignity of the Indians. At 
last the chiefs, Tanacharisson himself, Jeska- 
kake, and White Thunder set off with them. 

It was only seventy miles to Venango. Wash- 
ington saw, with indignation, that the French 
flag was floating over the big square log cabin 
which had once been occupied by Frazier, the 
gunsmith. On their arrival they asked several 
rough-looking men they met where they could 
find the commandant. One of them replied 
roughly, "I have the command of the Ohio." 
But when the young diplomat made his errand 

139 



The Story of Young 

known, the man said there was a still higher 
officer to be found at the fort to the northward, 
fifteen miles from Lake Erie. The brusque com- 
mandant at Venango proved to be Captain Cha- 
bert de Joncaire, whose mother was an Indian. 
The English envoy and his companions were in- 
vited to a supper that night. The hospitality 
was rough but warm, and the bottle was passed 
around freely. Major Washington preferred to 
keep his wits about him, but the French began 
to talk recklessly enough. Washington wrote in 
his journal: 

''The wine, as they dosed themselves 
pretty plentifully with it, soon banished 
all the restraint which at first appeared 
in their conversation and gave a license 
to their tongues to reveal their senti- 
ments more freely. 

^'They told me that it was their abso- 
lute design to take possession of the 
Ohio, and by G — they would do it; for 
although they were sensible the English 
could raise two men to their one, yet 
they knew their motions were too slow 
and dilatory to prevent any undertak- 
ing. They pretend to have an un- 
doubted right to the river from a dis- 
140 



George Washington 

CO very made by one La Salle sixty years 
ago." 

The day after the backwoods banquet was too 
stormy to allow the English party to proceed 
farther. . "Washington had been too wary to 
allow the French to see his Indian chiefs, but 
Captain Joncaire discovered their hiding place 
and greeted the Half King, old Jeskakake, and 
Wliite Thunder with such demonstrations of joy 
that he was irresistible. The Indians were 
loaded with gifts and plied with liquor till they 
forgot all about returning the French speech 
belts with the promised scorn. 

The next day the Half King was somewhat 
ashamed of himself and tried to redeem the time 
by calling the French into the council chamber 
where he made a speech and gave back the 
wampum, but the fire had been drawn from his 
wi^ath, and Joncaire refused to receive the belts, 
referring the Indian chiefs, as he had the white 
men, to the commandant of the fort near the 
source of French Creek. But Joncaire would 
not let them go for several days longer, for he 
managed to keep the Indians too drunk to travel. 
When they did get away from him, on the 7th of 

141 



The Story of Young 

December, the Captain sent Avith them a com- 
missary, named La Force, who proved a spy and 
a great mischief maker, with a guard of four 
Frenchmen. After four weary dsijs of wading 
through swamps and snow, Washington and his 
variegated escort of English, Indians, and 
French reached the fort. Here they were re- 
ceived by the gray-haired commandant, Chev- 
alier Legardeur de St. Pierre, with a politeness 
and dignity in keeping with the importance of 
their mission. The boy diplomat, for such he 
seemed to the aged Chevalier, presented Grover- 
nor Dinwiddie's diplomatic ''notice to quit," 
which closed with the following reference to the 
Virginian envoy : 

"I persuade myself you will receive 
and entertain Major Washington with 
the candor and politeness natural to 
your nation, and it will give me the 
greatest satisfaction if you can return 
him with an answer suitable to my 
wishes for a long and lasting peace be- 
tween us." 

The Chevalier de St. Pierre required two days 
to translate the Governor's letter and frame a 

142 



George Washington 

suitable reply. Meanwhile the young envoy saw 
and heard all there was to be seen and heard — 
from the fort itself, built about a hollow square, 
with bastions and palisades twelve feet high, and 
a guard house and chapel inside, to the number 
of canoes which might be ready for transport- 
ing soldiers down the river during the coming 
spring. 

On the evening of the 14th the Chevalier de 
St. Pierre delivered to Washington, sealed, his 
reply to the Governor of Virginia's letter. It 
was a shrewd but courteous letter, referring the 
Governor to *'the man higher up," Marquis Du- 
quesne, then military Governor of Canada. But 
the white men of the party could not induce the 
Indians to leave with them. Washington relates 
in his journal: 

''The Commandant ordered a plenti- 
ful store of liquor and provisions to be 
put on board our canoes, and appeared 
to be extremely complaisant, though he 
was exerting every artifice which he 
could invent to set our Indians at vari- 
ance with us, to prevent their going till 
after our departure ; presents, rewards, 
and everything which could be sug- 
143 



The Story of Young 

gested by him or his officers. I cannot 
say that ever in my life I suffered so 
much anxiety as I did in this affair. I 
saw that every stratagem which the 
most fruitful brain could invent was 
practised to win Half King to their in- 
terests, and that leaving them there was 
giving them the opportunity they 
aimed at. 

**I went to the Half King, and 
pressed him in the strongest terms to 
go; he told me that the Commandant 
would not discharge him imtil the next 
morning. I then went to the Com- 
mandant and complained to him of ill- 
treatment; for keeping them, as they 
were a part of my company, was detain- 
ing me. This he promised not to do, but 
to forward my journey as much as he 
could. He protested he did not keep 
them, but was ignorant of the cause of 
their stay; though I soon found it out. 
He had promised them a present of 
guns if they would wait until the morn- 
ing. As I am very much pressed by the 
Indians to wait this day for them, I 
consented, on the promise that nothing 
should hinder them in the morning." 



144 



George Washington 



CHAPTER XI 



Young Washington's Two Hairbreadth 
Escapes 



The next morning the French felt obliged to 
give the Indians the* guns they had promised. 
Then they offered the chiefs more liquor, which 
the poor Indians found nearly as hard to leave 
behind as the guns. But early in the day, before 
the chiefs could be intoxicated, the young diplo- 
mat appealed to the Half King's Indian sense 
of honor, reminding him that he had pledged his 
royal word that they would go when they got 
the guns from the French. With the aid of the 
Half King and the Virginians, Washington 
escorted old Jeskakake and White Thunder 
down to the creek. 

They went as if they were prisoners of state. 
The French commander fired a volley speeding 
the parting guests as if they were the embassy 
of a world power, and tried to load a canoe with 
some wines for their journey. The party em- 
barked in two large canoes, the white men in one 

145 

to — Washington. 



The Story of Young 

and the Indians in the other. Though the con- 
ditions were not favorable for a canoe race be- 
tween the white men and red, there seems to 
have been a little of the race spirit. The In- 
dians ran ahead the first day. The white men's 
canoe proceeded sixteen miles and camped for 
the night. They caught up with the Indians 
next day, for they had stopped and gone on a 
bear hunt, bagging three of the big beasts. The 
whole party spent the rest of the day in camp 
here to allow the Indians to have their feast and 
bear dance, and to wait for one of their number 
who had not returned from the hunt. 

The next morning the missing Indian had 
come back, so the white men went ahead. They 
traveled two days when their passage was 
blocked by an ice dam. After trying to break 
a way through this they gave it up and, carry- 
ing their canoe and cargo across a point of land, 
launched it in clear water. Before long they 
were overtaken by the Indians, with three more 
canoes of Frenchmen, and the crew of a fourth 
canoe which had been lost in the creek with a 
load of powder and lead. The whole party 
camped that night about twenty miles above 
Venango. 

146 



George Washington 

The creek had been so high as to be turbulent 
and dangerous, but now it had fallen so fast all 
hands had to get out, again and again, for fear 
the canoes would upset, and wade in the freezing 
water for half an hour at a time, pulling the f rail 
crafts about and dragging them over shallow 
places clogged with rocks which were covered 
with a coating of ice. 

Once, in deep water, a French canoe capsized, 
dumping its cargo of wine and brandy into the 
icy water. As liquors had caused them so much 
trouble, the Virginians paddled by and, as it is 
recorded in Washington's journal, ^'let them 
shift for themselves." 

On the 22d, after six days of rough and haz- 
ardous experiences that strange flotilla of canoes 
arrived at Venango. Washington and his 
retinue marched up to the Captain's cabin with 
their clothes frozen stiff and glistening, like 
knights of old in icy armor. Jolly Captain Jon- 
caire received them again with hearty hospi- 
tality. 

Being half Indian himself, he knew how to 
appeal to the Indian chiefs by flattery, and mak- 
ing up to them for the liquor they had ruefully 
left behind them at the fort. With wiles and 

147 



The Story of Young 

wines he succeeded so well that Washington had 
to leave them behind at Venango, after all, in the 
power of the crafty half-breed. The harassed 
envoy thus describes his difficulties at this point 
in his journal: 

*'Dec. 23d [1753]. When I got things 
ready to set off I sent for the Half King 
to know whether he intended to go with 
us or by water. He told me that White 
Thunder had hurt himself much, and 
was sick and unable to walk ; therefore 
he was obliged to carry him down the 
Allegheny and Ohio to Logstown in a 
canoe. 

*'As I found he intended to stay here 
a day or two, and knew that Monsieur 
Joncaire would employ every scheme to 
set him against the English, as he had 
before done, I told him I hoped he 
would guard against his flattery, and let 
no fine speeches influence him in their 
favor. He desired I might not be con- 
cerned, for he knew the French too well 
for anything to engage him in their be- 
half. 

"Our horses were now so weak and 
feeble, and the baggage so heavy (as we 
were obliged to provide all the neces- 
148 



George Washington 

saries which the journey would re- 
quire) that we doubted much their per- 
forming [carrj^ing] it. Therefore, 
myself and others (except the drivers, 
who were obliged to ride) gave up our 
horses for packs to assist along with 
the baggage. 

*'I put myself in an Indian walking 
dress, and continued with them three 
days, till I saw there was no possibility 
of their getting home in any reasonable 
time. The horses grew less able to 
travel every day; the cold increased 
very fast ; and the roads were becoming 
much worse by a deep snow, continu- 
ally freezing. 

'' Therefore, as I was uneasy to get 
back to make a report of my proceed- 
ings to his Honor the Governor, I de- 
termined to prosecute my journey the 
nearest way through the woods on foot. 

*' Accordingly I left Mr. Van Braam 
in charge of our baggage, with money 
and directions to provide necessaries 
from place to place for themselves and 
horses and to make the most convenient 
despatch in traveling. 

*'I took my necessary papers, pulled 
off my clothes, and tied myself up in a 
match coat. Then with gun in hand, 
149 



The Story of Young 

and pack at my back, in wMcli were my 
papers and provisions, I set out with 
Mr. Gist, fitted in the same manner, on 
.Wednesday, the 26th.'' 

That boy was "father to the man." Young 
Washington makes no reference to giving up 
his own horse and walking over terrible roads 
through woods and swamps to help the horses 
with the baggage at Christmas time ! He showed 
the same spirit which distinguished him twenty- 
three years later when he spent Christmas Day, 
1776, preparing to cross the Delaware that night 
in a blinding storm and the wide river filled with 
floating ice, and so cold that some of his men 
froze to death. 

Gist had objected that the major was not used 
to walking, and it would be unwise for him to 
make such a long journey on foot. But, as 
Washington insisted that it must be done, the 
sturdy pioneer started out with him, through 
the trackless forest. 

They walked eighteen miles the first day. On 
the third day they came to a place called Mur- 
dering-town, probably because of a massacre 
which had taken place there. Washington 
records that they "fell in with a party of 

150 



George Washington 

French Indians who had lain in wait for us." 
It was often a mystery, even to those experi- 
enced pioneers, how the news could have trav- 
eled so fast that those Indians became aware 
that two lone men were coming their way on 
foot. Some fleet-footed Indian on snow-shoes 
must have carried the word while the *' pale- 
faces" were wading and floundering along as 
fast as they could with their guns and heavy 
packs. 

One of the Indians came forward extending 
his hand and calling Mr. Gist by his Indian 
name. They all asked too many questions and 
showed too much curiosity to please the white 
men. Gist had proposed that they strike from 
there across to Shannopin's town, within a few 
miles of the Fork of the Ohio instead of taking 
the long route around. Neither of the white 
men had been through that part of the country, 
so they asked the Indian who seemed to know 
Gist to guide them. This the fellow was very 
willing to do. They set off at once, the Indian 
carrying Washington's pack. By the time they 
had walked ten miles the young white man's 
feet, as Gist had feared, were so sore as to make 
him propose that they stop and rest there all 

151 



The Story of Young 

night. Gist was suspicious of their too willing 
guide, whom he thought he had seen during their 
first stop at Venango. He was apparently lead- 
ing them in the wrong direction, too far to the 
north. The Indian turned and, seeing that the 
young ** paleface" walked with great difficulty, 
offered to carry his gun, but Washington de- 
clined to let him, for he also was uneasy about 
the fellow. 

Then the Indian grew surly and menacing. 
He said they were near an encampment of 
Ottawas who would be sure to kill them if they 
stopped to camp there as Washington wanted 
to do. In fact, he claimed he had just heard the 
report of a gun in the direction of his own cabin, 
so he started directly north, pretending to lead 
them there for the night. 

This was too much, and Washington directed 
the Indian to camp beside the next stream, but 
as they came about two miles farther to a clear- 
ing, he commanded the guide to stop there and 
light their campfire. Suddenly the Indian, see- 
ing that he could decoy them along no farther, 
wheeled, fired point blank at them, and jumped 
behind a white oak tree. 

^^Shot?" gasped Washington. 

152 




VOlWr, WASIIIXC.TOX DISARMING THE IXDl AX. 



George Washington 

**No,'' replied Gist; they made a rush at the 
tree and caught the Indian reloading. They 
took away his musket and finished loading it be- 
fore his eyes. He expected to be shot with his 
own gun. Gist proposed to dispatch him at 
once, but Washington objected. How could they 
get rid of him if they did not kill him. After a 
hurried consultation Gist said to the Indian: 

**You fired your gun to get an answer from 
your cabin I" 

The wretch thought, *' These palefaces are 
silly enough to think it was an accident after 
alll'^ and nodded assent. He knew they were 
foolish not to kill him, as he deserved to be, even 
if they did not shoot him in self-defense. He 
said it was not far to his cabin, and he would 
hurry on and bring back help. 

*'You go home," said Gist. **I am very tired 
and the major's feet are very much sore — too 
sore to walk another step this night. We will 
follow your tracks in the morning." 

The Indian was more than glad to get away so 
easily. Gist followed him and listened until th^ 
scoundrel had gone several miles. Then the two 
white men took up their heavy loads and hurried 
as fast as they could in the opposite direction. 

153 



The Story of Young 

Washington hobbled along all that night. It 
was really a race for life, as there were savage 
enemies all around them who would be glad to 
kill two lone white men, and take their scalps. 
They did not dare to stop to make a fire, or even 
to eat, for fear of being tracked by the treacher- 
ous guide, leading other Indians on to do what 
he had attempted and failed. 

They came to Piney Creek in the morning, 
and followed it all day along down toward the 
Allegheny. Before night they found the tracks 
of an Indian hunting party. They left their 
tracks — they also wore moccasins — among those 
of the Indians, as though they had been hunting 
also, and then separated so that their trails 
would not be seen together beyond that place. 
After walking alone several miles they dared to 
stop awhile to eat and sleep the sleep of the 
utterly exhausted. 

After another day they arrived, footsore and 
nearly frozen, at the Allegheny River. They 
could not feel safe until they had put that great 
river between them and the murderous savages. 
It had been so bitterly cold that they hoped to 
find the river frozen over solid, but the middle 
of the stream was still uncovered, and filled with 

154 



George Washington 

floating ice. They worked all one day, cutting 
down trees and building a raft of logs pinned 
together, all with one poor little hatchet. It was 
dark before they succeeded in launching their 
crude raft and got adrift mid-stream among the 
floating blocks of ice. Before they could push 
themselves half way across, the raft got caught 
in an ice floe and was turning up on edge, when 
Washington, to stop this, and to hold the raft 
still and let the troublesome ice float by, set his 
pole between the ice blocks and the raft. The 
pole got caught in such a way that the force of 
the s\\ift current threw him into ten feet of 
water. Quick as a flash he caught on the end of 
a projecting log, or he would have been carried 
under the ice where nothing could have saved 
him. Gist helped him back upon the raft, and in 
a few minutes his clothing was frozen stiff. 

Here was a desperate state of affairs. They 
could neither cross the river nor stay in the 
channel mthout great peril. What could they 
do? They looked at each other, but neither 
spoke. At last they found themselves floating 
rapidly near a small island in the middle of the 
stream. They managed to get to this place of 
safety for the night. Still they were not safe. 

155 



The Story of Young 

The Indians could see and shoot them from the 
shore, for there was no shelter. They made a 
fire, however, and slept, though they were in 
danger of freezing to death while asleep. The 
cold was so terrible that Gist, hardened as he 
was by many adventures, had all of his fingers 
and some of his toes frozen. 

By morning the bitter cold from which they 
were suffering had prepared a way for their 
escape. The river was now frozen over, and 
they walked the rest of the way across from the 
island on solid ice. 

Another day's tramping brought them again 
to Turtle Creek and to the house of Frazier, the 
trapper and gunsmith who had escaped from the 
French and Indians at Venango. 

While waiting at Frazier 's to purchase two 
horses on which to continue their journey, 
Washington improved the opportunity to call 
on an old Indian queen, Alliquippa, who, he 
heard, was feeling slighted because he had not 
called on her on his way northward. 

Young as he was, he saw the importance of 
doing everything in his power to make friends 
of all the Indians he could influence in favor of 
the English. To this end he gave her a match- 

156 



George Washington 

coat and a bottle of rum. With a touch of humor 
he entered in his diary that the woman chief 
seemed to consider the rum the "better present 
of the two.'' It is well known that in Washing- 
ton's day the present prejudice against strong 
drink did not exist even among religious people. 
After picking up a pair of horses. Washing- 
ton and Gist proceeded on their way. The j^oung 
envoy stayed one night with the Fairfaxes, at 
*' Bel voir," and reported to Governor Din- 
mddie, delivering Chevalier St. Pierre's reply 
on the 16th of January, 1754. 



CHAPTER XII 



Major Washington's First Battle 



The quaint * 'Journal" of the youthful am- 
bassador was published and given a wide circu- 
lation in England as well as among the Ameri- 
can colonies. Then statesmen and men of af- 
fairs on both sides of the Atlantic realized that 
the French attitude and Chevalier de St. 

157 



The Story of Young 

Pierre's diplomatic reply to the Governor of 
Virginia meant war for the control of the west- 
ern territory in America. 

Governor Dinwiddle promptly wrote letters to 
the governors of the other colonies to unite and 
prepare for the great struggle. 

In order that Virginia might take the lead, the 
Governor sent Captain Trent, who had been 
frightened back from the French outposts, to 
superintend the building of a fort at the fork 
of the Ohio, as the observing young envoy had 
recommended. 

After him Governor Dinwiddle sent Major 
Washington with one hundred and fifty men un- 
trained and poorly equipped to help in building 
and defending the fort. They were to find Cap- 
tain Trent with pack horses and supplies at 
Wills 's Creek, a trading post about one hundred 
and fifty miles on the road. 

At Wills 's Creek Washington found bad news 
instead of horses. Captain Trent had left the 
fort he was building, and his second in command 
had also found business elsewhere, leaving the 
unfinished fort in care of Ensign Ward, with 
only forty-one men to erect and protect it. 

Before Washington and his men arrived at 

158 



George Washington 

Wills 's Creek they heard that Captain Trent 
and all his men had been captured by a thou- 
sand French, but this rumor proved false. A 
large body of French and Indians under a cap- 
tain named Contrecoeur suddenly appeared up 
the river in six large boats and about three hun- 
dred canoes, and swarmed around the half-com- 
pleted fort. 

It was useless for Ward with forty badly 
equipped men to hold out against so many hun- 
dreds of the enemy. He surrendered on condi- 
tion that he and his followers should be allowed 
to retreat into the woods with their tools as well 
as their lives and scalps. 

The French tore down the little fort the Eng- 
lish had begun and built a larger fortification at 
the junction of the Allegheny and the Monon- 
gahela Rivers, where Pittsburgh now stands, 
and named it Fort Duquesne, in honor of a gen- 
eral then in command in the French province of 
Canada. 

Still young Washington pushed on with three 
hundred and fifty men (two hundred so-called 
soldiers had been forwarded to Wills 's Creek) 
to meet three times as many French and Indians 
and keep them from invading Virginia. He 

159 



The Story of Young 

began clearing and building roads which should 
be of service when the other governors should 
send their companies in the defense of the 
colonies. 

For several reasons very few soldiers were 
forthcoming. The colonies were governed by 
men sent from England who were so arbitrary'- 
and overbearing that they did not inspire confi- 
dence in themselves nor loyalty to the English 
king. 

Besides, there were many Quakers, especially 
in Pennsylvania, who did not believe in war, so 
the young major of militia had a poor, ragged lot 
to command. Some of the companies arriving 
from other colonies refused to assist in the work 
of constructing roads or building defenses, be- 
cause Washington had not received his rank di- 
rect from the King of England. They called 
themselves ''Independents," and were too inde- 
pendent to work. They only stood by and jeered 
at the heroic, half -starved Virginians and their 
brave and patient leader, who worked like a 
beaver to defend themselves and their families 
against the French invaders. 

Yet Major Washington, not daunted by these 
exasperating circumstances, pressed on toward 

160 



George Washington 

the junction of the two rivers that form the 
Oliio. In this he was perhaps more brave than 
wise. 

Advancing slowly, because of annoying delays 
and difficulties, he and his men reached a broad 
level field, known as Great Meadows, at the base 
of Laurel Hill, a low mountain of the Alle- 
ghenies, not far from the Monongahela. Here 
he found what he called '*a charming place for 
an encounter," and began to throw up an em- 
bankment and erect a palisade, which he named, 
because of their many hardships and privations. 
Fort Necessity. 

While engaged in this work, Washington 
heard of a number of Frenchmen prowling 
about. Picking out forty of his men, he started 
on a *^ pitch dark'' night in the driving rain to 
discover their whereabouts. He wrote of this 
experience : 

^'The path was hardly wide enough 
for one man; we often lost it, and 
could not find it again for fifteen or 
twenty minutes, and we often tumbled 
over each other in the dark." 

Just before sunrise on the 28th of May, 1754, 
they reached the camp of some friendly Indians, 

161 

tt-^Washington. 



The Story of Young 

who joined them in their stealthy march, single 
file, through the woods to find where the French 
were hiding. 

Suddenly they came upon the enemy in a hol- 
low among the rocks. The French sprang up, 
surprised, and seized their guns. Washington, 
who was in front, gave the order to fire. A 
sharp skirmish followed, and Jumonville, the 
French ensign in command, was killed, with nine 
of his men. One man on Washington's side was 
killed and several wounded. Twenty-two of the 
French were made prisoners and marched back 
to Great Meadows. 

This was Washington's first battle. He had 
fired the first shot himself. Sending his pris- 
oners back to Winchester, he wrote to Governor 
Dinwiddle from Fort Necessity: 

*'Your Honor may depend I will not 
be surprised, let them come at what 
hour they will ; and this is as much as I 
can promise. But my best endeavors 
shall not be wasted to effect more. 

*'I doubt not if you hear I am beaten, 
but you will hear at the same time that 
we have done our duty, in fighting as 
long as there was a shadow of hope." 
162 



George Washington 

Brave words for a military commander of 
twenty-two I Yet this was not a boastful utter- 
ance, for the young commander did much more 
than he promised. 

Of Washington's first battle and its far- 
reaching consequences, Thackeray wrote, more 
than a hundred years later: 

*'It was strange that in a savage for- 
est of Pennsylvania, a young Virginian 
officer should fire a shot and waken up 
a war that was to last for sixty years, 
which was to cover his own country and 
pass into Europe, to cost France her 
American colonies, to sever ours from 
us [English] and create the great 
Western Republic ; to rage over the Old 
World when extinguished in the New; 
and of all the myriads engaged in the 
vast contest, to leave the prize of 
greatest fame to him who struck the 
first blow!" 

WHAT WASHINGTON DID ON THE FOURTH OF JULY, 

TWENTY-TWO YEARS BEFORE THE GREAT 

DECLARATION 

A friend of George the Second, the English 
King, while speaking of the first encounter of 

163 



The Story of Young 

what came to be known as the French and Indian 
War, told that monarch that George Washing- 
ton had remarked that 'Hhe whistling of bullets 
was like music." 

King George replied, ''If that young man had 
heard more bullets he would not have thought 
so." 

Late in life, after this story was widely 
printed, some one asked Washington if he had 
ever said such a thing. With a smile the old 
general replied : 

''If I did so, it must have been when I was 
very young. ' ' 

The French raised an indignant hue and cry 
because a harmless party of their men on the 
way to confer mth the English had been sur- 
prised and shot down in cold blood. Several of 
the prisoners Washington had sent to Virginia, 
under a strong escort, tried to make Governor 
Dinwiddle believe they had been unfairly at- 
tacked. 

The young commander had treated his pris- 
oners courteously, and had given two of them 
clothing from his own scant supply. But they 
told every one w^ho would listen that they had 
been surprised and shot down while on a peace- 

164 



George Washington 

ful mission, merely to warn the English against 
advancing farther. 

Washington made a vigorous denial of their 
claims, and showed that they were stealing about 
to catch him off guard, just as he had surprised 
them. In a letter to the Governor he wrote : 

*'I doubt not but they will endeavor 
to amuse you with many smooth stories, 
as they did me ; but they w^ere confuted 
in them all, and, by circumstances too 
plain to be denied, almost made 
ashamed of their assertions. 

^'I have heard since they went away 
they would say they called on us not to 
fire ; but that I know to be false, for I 
was the first man that approached them, 
and the first whom they saw, and they 
immediately ran to their arms and fired 
briskly till they were defeated. . . . 

''I fancy they will have the assurance 
of asking the privilege due to an em- 
bassy, w^hen in strict justice they ought 
to be hanged as spies of the worst sort.'' 

The surrounding Indians began to flock to 
Fort Necessity, and other companies came up 
from Wills 's Creek to aid in repelling the ad- 
vance of the French. 

165 



The Story of Young 

Their colonel, Joshua Fry, had died in the 
interval, and Washington was left in command 
of the English resistance. 

But Captain Mackaye, who came with a com- 
pany from South Carolina, refused to serve 
under Washington, who was merely a Colonial 
officer. Young Washington, with characteristic 
tact and courtesy, avoided a serious conflict of 
authority by advancing with his men thirteen 
miles to a place at which Christopher Gist, the 
scout and his companion of the year before, had 
made a small settlement, thus leaving Captain 
Mackaye in command at Fort Necessity. 

The Indian spies came back with reports of 
more than a thousand French and Indians 
swarming southward. He ordered a retreat to 
Fort Necessity, which flimsy stockade they now 
hastened to strengthen, though Mackaye 's *' reg- 
ulars" from South Carolina refused even then 
to do any real work. Washington sent a com- 
pany back to Wills 's Creek for supplies and re- 
inforcements, but within two days the little, 
palisade at Great Meadows was surrounded by 
nine hundred French, and many Indian allies. 

Even then Washington went outside and 
fought the enemy stubbornly, but the handful of 

166 



George Washington 

Virginians were finally driven back inside their 
intrenchments. 

Without a roof they were at the mercy of the 
elements. The rain fell in torrents. De Villiers, 
a brother-in-law of the dead Jumonville, in com- 
mand of the French, summoned Washington to 
surrender. 

The young commander, who had been forced 
to rid himself of many of his too '' independent" 
white soldiers, was now deserted by his Indian 
allies; also, being without provisions and short 
of ammunition he decided that ''the better part 
of valor is discretion." Accordingly he sent 
Jacob Van Braam, his so-called interpreter of 
the year before, to arrange terms of capitulation 
with the French. 

Here already was an occasion for the com- 
mander to regret that he had not learned French 
in Rector Marye's school; for the terms of sur- 
render were written in that language. 

It suited the ghastly humor of de Villiers to 
refer in the articles of agreement to the death 
of his brother-in-law at the skirmish in Great 
Meadows, as if he had been assassinated in a 
cowardly manner. So, when Washington signed 
the terms of capitulation, he unwittingly affixed 

167 



The Story of Young 

his name to what appeared to be a confession of 
murder I 

Afterward, when the character of the docu- 
ment became known, Van Braam explained that 
he was not aware of anj^thing offensive in the 
following paragraph which closed the articles of 
capitulation, of which the following is a trans- 
lation : 

^^Art. 7th. Since the English have in 
their power an officer and two cadets, 
and in general all the prisoners whom 
they took when they assassinated Sieur 
de Jumo7iville^ they now promise to 
send them with an escort to Fort Du- 
quesne. . . . 

**And to secure the safe performance 
of this article, as well as of this treaty, 
Messrs. Jacob Van Braam and Robert 
Stobo, both captains, shall be delivered 
to us as hostages until the arrival of our 
French and Canadians mentioned 
above. . . . 

(Signed) *^ James Mackaye, G. C, 
**G° Washington, 

"COTJLON VlLLIER.'^ 

It will be observed that while Washington was 
in actual command, he allowed Mackaye to sign 

168 



George Washington 

as general commander, while he was content 
with his accustomed *'G° Washington, '^ without 
any rank or title. In this way he began early to 
manifest his true greatness. He had already 
learned to command the highest respect by not 
demanding it. 

According to the articles of agreement Wash- 
ington was allowed to march away with his men, 
without being scalped or molested, but with "the 
honors of war." 

So, on July 4, 1754, he and his little company, 
''snatching victory from the jaws of defeat," 
marched out of Fort Necessity, without ammu- 
nition or provisions, but with drums beating and 
colors flying ! 

Tanacharisson, the Half King, who led their 
Indian allies, tried to excuse their treachery in 
deserting the English in their time of need and 
peril by explaining that in the struggle between 
the contending white forces ''the French acted 
like cowards, and the English like fools." 



169 



The Story of Young 



CHAPTER XIII 



Washington's Terrible Experiences with an 
English General 



According to an agreement he signed with the 
French commander, Washington promised to 
abstain from building forts for at least one year. 
He must have had bitterness in his heart as he 
rode away from the scene of his first victory and 
his first defeat. 

It was an injustice that he was forced to re- 
treat at all. Those who should have worked side 
by side with him had refused, under the silliest 
of pretexts, to help in the defense of the country. 
They should have been summarily dealt with for 
their foolish treachery, but Governor Dinwiddle 
upheld them in their absurd stickling for official 
precedence. 

Then the Indians were hardly to blame for de- 
serting him when they saw how his white 
brothers failed to help him in the time of his 

170 



George Washington 

great need. Reinforcements, and even provi- 
sions, had been withheld, and he had been ren- 
dered helpless in every possible way. Yet he 
had stayed and met the enemy, instead of run- 
ning away, as cowardly Cajitain Trent had done 
twice. 

The Virginia House of Burgesses appreciated 
his heroic struggles and passed a vote of thanks 
to him and his officers, ''for their bravery and 
gallant defense of their country," and awarded 
his men a pistole (about four dollars) apiece. 

Although George Washington, at twenty-two, 
had heard bullets singing about him, and had 
stood nine hours under fire from a far superior 
force, he had learned that the pick and spade 
are mightier than the sword and musket, and 
that tact and courtesy are even more powerful 
than weapons of war. 

Washington was executor of Lawrence's large 
estate, which stood in need of more capable man- 
agement than his brother's widow was able to 
give it. The young ladies of the neighborhood, 
also, were pleased to honor him as hero, for his 
Virginia soldiers had come home with glowing 
accounts of his manliness and courage. Though 

171 



The Story of Young 

his ardor seemed not in the least dampened by 
his reverses, he must have been glad of the yearns 
respite from military labors agreed upon in the 
French articles of capitulation. 

Virginia's foolish Governor treated the pris- 
oners of war badly. This rankled in the young 
major's bosom more deeply than the personal 
injustice he himself had suffered. Governor 
Dinwiddle was so subservient to the influences 
of the officers appointed by the crown that 
Washington resigned his commission in disgust 
and retired to private life at Mount Vernon. 

The French were so elated because of their 
doubtful victory over a handful of men at Fort 
Necessity that they relaxed their vigilance at 
Fort Duquesne. Captain Stobo, one of the hos- 
tages, regardless of the danger to himself and 
Van Braam, the other surety, addressed a secret 
letter to the commander of the English troops. 
This reached the Governor of Pennsylvania, 
and was finally forwarded to Governor Din- 
widdle. With this heroic missive was a plan of 
the fort. 

*' There are two hundred men here,'' 
wrote Stobo, ^^and two hundred ex- 
pected ; the rest have gone off in detach- 
172 



George Washington 

ments to the amount of one thousand, 
besides Indians. None lodge in the fort 
but Contrecoeur and the guard, consist- 
ing of forty men and five officers; the 
rest lodge in bark cabins around the 
fort. 

''The Indians have access, day and 
night, and come and go when they 
please. If one hundred trusty Shaw- 
nees, Mingoes, and Delawares were 
picked out they might surprise the fort, 
lodging themselves under the palisades 
by day, and at night secure the guards 
with their tomahawks — shut the sally- 
gate — and the fort is ours ! . . . 

"Consider the good of the expedition 
without regard to us. When we en- 
gaged to serve the country it was ex- 
pected that we were to do it with our 
lives. 

*'For my part, I would die a hundred 
deaths to have the pleasure of possess- 
ing this fort but one day. 

"They are so vain of their success at 
the Meadows it was worse than death to 
hear them. 

"Haste to strike!" 

Governor Dinwiddle, instead of giving up the 
prisoners, as had been agreed between the 

173 



The Story of Young 

French and English, so that the heroic Stobo and 
Van Braam might be released, requested Wash- 
ington to take a few men and capture Fort Du- 
quesne as Stobo had suggested. 

Washington, indignant at Dinwiddle's treach- 
ery and exasperated by his sanction of the con- 
temptible conduct of the crown officers and men, 
flatly refused to consider the matter. Besides, 
he knew something of the difficulties and hard- 
ships of such a campaign in winter. Brave as 
he was, his courage was tempered with discre- 
tion. 

During the following year, 1755, Governor 
Dinwiddle 's agitation began to bear fruit. Gen- 
eral Edward Braddock was sent from England 
to conquer the French and Indians in their 
western wilderness. Braddock was a valiant 
and successful general, but he believed in doing 
everything according to scientific regulations 
laid down in the European military manuals. 
Arrogant and quick-tempered, he resented the 
suggestions from the colonists as to the best way 
to fight the Indians and backwoodsmen. 

Dr. Benjamin Franklin, the great man of 
Pennsylvania, attempted to remonstrate with 
him, but the English general, he said, *' smiled at 

174 



George Washington 

my ignorance and replied, * These savages may, 
indeed, be a formidable enemy to your raw 
American militia, but ui)on the king's regular 
and disciplined troops, sir, it is impossible that 
they should make an impression.' " 

Braddock invited Washington to take a place 
on his staff as aide-de-camp and adviser. Yet 
the general would accept none of his advice. The 
aide spoke of having ''frequent disputes" with 
his chief. He once wi'ote to a friend that Brad- 
dock was "incapable of giving up any point he 
asserts, be it ever so incompatible with reason or 
common sense." 

In spite of all the British generaPs arrogance 
and testiness, he had a high opinion of Wash- 
ington, for he wrote of him: "He strikes me as 
being a young man of extraordinary and exalted 
character, and is destined to make no inconsid- 
erable figure in our country." 

But Washington was not satisfied to have the 
great British general think well of him, person- 
ally. He suffered because of the wrong that was 
being done to Braddock himself, to the army, 
and the country by the English general's stub- 
born self-sufficiency. 

On the route of march General Braddock de- 

175 



The Story of Young 

tailed Washington to return to Winchester, with 
an escort of eight men, to convoy an iron chest 
containing four thousand pounds in money to 
pay off the soldiers. 

The aide referred to the courage of his escort 
in the following terms: ^' Which eight men were 
two days assembling, but I believe they would 
not have been more than as many seconds dis- 
persing if I had been attacked.'^ 

After bringing up the *^ sinews of war'' in the 
treasure chest, Washington suffered much from 
Braddock's painful deliberation in working his 
way toward Fort Duquesne. 

**I found," he wrote a friend, *'that 
instead of pushing on with vigor, with- 
out regarding a little rough road, they 
were halting to level every mole-hill, 
and to erect bridges over every brook, 
by which means we were four days in 
getting twelve miles." 

The aide's impatience, combined with other 
conditions, threw him into a raging fever. 
Unable to ride, he had to be carried over the 
rough forest roads in a lumbering covered 
wagon. He became so ill that he was left 

176 




YOUXG WASHINGTON RALLIES BRADDOCKS TROOPS. 



George Washington 

behind with a doctor and several attendants. 

This was a painful ordeal for Washington. 
Before he was pronounced well enough to ride 
he made his escape from the hospital tent, 
mounted his horse, and dashed furiously after 
the army. 

He caught up just in time, as the troops were 
fording the Monongahela, and about to attack 
the fort. The splendid appearance of the troops, 
in their scarlet uniforms, and glittering arms 
and equipments, filled him with enthusiasm. 

Suddenly there was firing in front and blood- 
curdling war-whoops resounded on all sides. 
The van of Braddock's army fell back and threw 
the even ranks into disorder. They had fallen 
into an ambush. 

Once more Washington implored the general 
to order the soldiers into the woods, to shield 
themselves from the deadly fire which was pour- 
ing in upon them from all sides. 

But the young aide again pleaded in vain. 
Braddock obstinately decreed that the soldiers 
must fight in platoons or not at all. They did 
not fight at all. They could not. The men stood 
in one another's way, dazed and horror-stricken. 
They huddled together in terror, for they had 

177 

1^ — ]Vash{ngton. 



The Story of Young 

not been prepared for the devilish din of Indian 
warfare. The savages, dancing around them 
like fiends, slaughtered them as they would 
cattle. The British regulars broke and fled in a 
wild panic. 

The stubborn general paid for his obstinacy 
with his life. Seven hundred English soldiers 
and sixty-two out of eighty-six officers were 
killed, by only two hundred Frenchmen and six 
hundred Indians. 

When Braddock was mortally wounded Wash- 
ington took command. He rode up and down, all 
reckless of the closeness of the Indians and 
French, fighting like a demon, and striving to 
rally the "cowardly regulars," as he afterward 
called the routed British soldiers. 

The only fighting worthy of the name, on the 
English side, was done by the men Braddock had 
sneered at as "raw American militia." They 
were at last permitted to fight the Indians in 
their own way, and though they were nearly all 
killed they sold their lives dearly and saved the 
day — or, rather, the night, for the retreat was all 
that was left to save. 

As for Washington, he dashed hither and 
thither, trying to bring up the artillery, and 

178 



George Washington 

wlien no one would serve a cannon he fired it 
himself. In the mad rush of that awful after- 
noon his escape from death was so miraculous 
that the Indians believed his life was charmed 
and they could not kill him. He was reported 
dead by some of the fugitives who reached the 
various Virginia settlements. 

Braddock had fought with the utmost hero- 
ism. He had several horses shot under him. He 
cursed his men for their cowardice, and struck 
some of them with the flat of his sword. In 
frantic rage he fought for three hours. About 
five o'clock in the afternoon he fell from his 
horse with a wound he knew would be fatal. Two 
Virginia officers bore him from the field and he 
died expressing regrets for his obstinacy in not 
taking Washington's advice. 

They dragged him away on the retreat, but he 
died the next day. Washington read the service 
for the dead over his body, which they buried 
hastily in a hollowed-out log in the wilder- 
ness. 

Meanwhile the French and Indians did not 
try to follow the retreating English. Satisfied 
with their * 'famous victory," they spent their 
time dividing the spoil, drinking the rum and 

179 



The Story of Young 

eating the bacon they had found, and in fiendish 
joy counting over the many English scalps they 
had taken. 

Washington stopped to rest at Fort Cumber- 
land, which had been built at Wills 's Creek 
trading post. From this point he wrote to his 
brother, on the 18th of July, 1755 : 

*'Dear Brother: As I have heard, 
since my arrival at this place, a circum- 
stantial account of my death and dying 
speech, I take this early opportunity of 
contradicting the first, and of assuring 
you that I have not as yet composed the 
latter. 

*'But by the all-powerful dispensa- 
tions of Providence, I have been pro- 
tected beyond all human probability 
and expectation ; for I had four bullets 
through my coat, and two horses shot 
under me, yet escaped unhurt, altho^ 
death was leveling my companions on 
every side of me ! 

*'We have been most scandalously 
beaten by a trifling body of men, but 
fatigue and want of time will prevent 
me from giving you any of the details 
until I have the happiness of seeing 
you at Mount Vernon, which I now 
180 



George Washington 

most ardently wish for, since we are 
drove in this far. 

*'A weak and feeble state of health 
obliges me to halt here for two or three 
days to recover a little strength, that I 
may be able to proceed homewards with 
more ease. 

*'You may expect to see me there on 
on Saturday or Sunday se' night, 
[week] which is as soon as I can well be 
down, as I shall take my Bullskin Plan- 
tations in my way. 

^'Pray give my compliments to all my 
friends. 

**I am, dear Jack, 

** Your most affectionate brother, 

*' George.'' 



CHAPTER XIV 



Settling Two Important Questions for Life 



It was July 26, 1755, when Washington re- 
turned to Mount Vernon. He was now master 
of that great estate, first by his father's will, 
and the legacy of his older brother, through 

181 



The Story of Young 

the recent death of Lawrence's little daughter. 

The horrible battle at Fort Duquesne and the 
sad and painful retreat, while he was still suffer- 
ing the ravages of a fever, had impaired his 
health. 

Yet the people of Virginia, official and other- 
wise, begged him to accept the office of com- 
mander-in-chief of the troops of that province. 
His mother was now as anxious that George 
should reliquish his military career as she had 
been, eight years earlier, for him to give up go- 
ing to sea. On the 14th of August he wrote to 
her: "If it is in my power to avoid going to the 
Ohio again, I shall; but if the command is 
pressed upon me by the general voice of the 
country, and offered upon such terms as camiot 
be objected against, it would reflect dishonor on 
me to refuse it." 

President Robinson, of the House of Bur- 
gesses, wrote Washington that the people wanted 
him to take his place at the head of the military 
affairs of the province. The young men of Vir- 
ginia now began to curry favor with the young 
gentleman of whom they had once thought 
slightingly because he earned money as a land 
surveyor. 

182 



George Washington 

One of his friends wrote him that ^'if a Satur- 
day night's rest cannot be sufficient to enable 
your coming here to-morrow, the ladies will get 
horses, or attempt their strength on foot to 
salute you, so desirous are they, with loving 
speed, to have an ocular demonstration of your 
being the same identical gent ( !) that lately de- 
parted to defend his country's cause." 

Archibald Gary, a member of one of the fa- 
mous ''First Families of Virginia," wrote the 
young aide-de-camp, at this time, that ''Mrs. 
Car}^ and Miss Randolph join in wishing joii 
that sort of glory which will most endear you to 
the fair sex." 

The ladies, who are always thought to be at- 
tracted especially by gold lace and buttons, were 
the more charmed to know a young officer who 
had bullet holes in his coat as well as gilt buttons 
on it. So George Washington was subjected to 
as many flattering attentions as a modern 
matinee idol ! 

Yet he cared little for feminine praise. He 
went about his affairs as soon as his health would 
permit. A large company of militia had been 
raised, and Governor Dinmddie, forced by pop- 
ular demand, appointed him commander-in-chief 

183 



The Story of Young 

of the Virginia forces with the rank of Colonel. 

But old Mr. Dinwiddle, still foolish and fickle, 
made Washington's rank seem lower than that 
of an inferior officer who had been appointed by 
the crown. This was not only a personal humili- 
ation to the Virginia commander, but it was an 
insult to all the men under him, if not to the 
entire province. 

After the death of Braddock, Governor Shir- 
ley, of Massachusetts, was appointed com- 
mander-in-chief of the Colonial armies. In order 
to prevent further trouble and to avoid future 
defection in the face of the enemy. Colonel 
Washington determined to make the journey of 
five hundred miles to Boston, Shirley's head- 
quarters, and have the question settled once for 
all. 

Standing six feet three in height, erect and 
handsome, the wealthy young master of Mount 
Vernon was an attractive personage on this not- 
able journey, which he made on horseback, at- 
tended by two aides and several colored body- 
servants. 

He was dressed in his buff-and-blue uniform, a 
scarlet cloak, and sword-knot of red and gold. 
The Washington arms adorned the accoutre- 

184 



George Wasliingtoii 

ments of the horses. His aides also were in buff 
and blue, and the servants followed, wearing the 
Washington livery of white and scarlet, with 
hats laced with silver. 

Colonel Washington's fame had preceded him, 
as the chivalrous young envoy and officer of Vir- 
ginia. His first ' ' Journal ' ' had been widely read 
at home and abroad. He had fired the first shot 
and won the victory in the opening battle of what 
promised to be a long war between the mother 
country and France. And he had been the hero 
of Fort Duquesne. 

Therefore, he was lionized in Philadelphia, 
New York, and Boston. While in New York his 
friend, Beverly Robinson, took him to call upon 
his sister-in-law. Miss Mary Philipse, reputed to 
be the wealthiest heiress in America. 

It is often related that the dignified Virginia 
Colonel asked for the hand of the young New 
York heiress. This is not likely, however. No 
doubt he paid her several calls and many com- 
pliments, but his pressing military engagements 
did not allow him time to lay siege to that young 
lady's heart. 

Washington was welcomed in Boston, then the 
largest city in the American colonies. He re- 

185 



The Story of Yomig 

mained there ten days, conferring with the Gov- 
ernor, attending the ''great and general court" 
in formal state, and dancing nearly every night 
at a ball given by a military magnate or a lead- 
ing citizen of the town. 

Governor Shirley's decision w^as in favor, not 
only of Washington, but of all Colonial officers 
and soldiers. The question of rank was now 
settled and the occasion for friction on that 
score was fortunately relieved. It was a great 
victory over an officious inferior named Dag- 
worthy, as well as over Virginia's toadying 
Governor. 

The military chief of the province was not 
permitted to remain at Mount Vernon among his 
admiring neighbors and friends. There were 
rumors of an Indian uprising on the Virginia 
frontier, and the fear of a French invasion drove 
men and women in from the outlying settle- 
ments. 

When the young commander-in-chief was ap- 
proaching Winchester on horseback he was met 
by a crowd of men and women who implored his 
assistance and protection. What he wrote of 
this occurrence shows a fervent spirit of pa- 
triotism which does the highest credit to the 

186 



George AVasliington 

heart of a seasoned soldier of twenty-six: 

''The supplicating tears of the 
women, ' ' his letter reads, ' ' and the mov- 
ing petitions of the men melt me into 
such deadly sorrow that I solemnly de- 
clare, if I know my owii mind, I could 
offer myself a willing sacrifice to the 
butchering enemy, provided that would 
contribute to the people's ease." 

While he was riding to and from Williams- 
burg, the provincial capital of Virginia, and 
Winchester, where he had his headquarters for 
the frontier, he met, one day at dinner, a wealthy 
and beautiful young widow named Martha 
Dandridge Custis, who lived on a beautiful 
estate, called ''White House," on the banks of 
the Pamunky River. 

There was a brief but courtly courtship. 
Colonel Washington w^as accepted, and the mar- 
riage was to be solemnized as soon as his mili- 
tary business would permit. His great desire 
was to regain possession of Fort Duquesne, 
w^hich he, as envoy, had pointed out as a place of 
great strategic value five years before. 

The time now seemed ripe for this decisive 
move. On his way thither, on the 20th of July, 

187 



The Story of Young 

1758, shortly after their betrothal, he wrote the 
f ollowmg hasty note to his affianced : 

''We have begun our march for the 
Ohio. A courier is starting for Will- 
iamsburg, and I embrace the opportun- 
ity to send a few words to one whose 
life is now inseparable from mine. 

** Since that happy hour when we 
made our pledges to each other, my 
thoughts have been continually going 
to you as another self. That an all- 
powerful Providence may keep us both 
in safety is the prayer of your ever 
faithful and affectionate friend. 

' ' G° Washington. ' ' 

As Colonel Washington and his command ap- 
proached Fort Duquesne he saw much to remind 
him of the great disaster of three years before. 

Instead of the expected resistance, they found 
the French fort deserted and destroyed when 
they reached it, on the 25th of November, 1758, 
and Washington proceeded to plant the British 
flag on the charred and still smoking ruins. 

The English soon erected another fortification 
at this point of vantage, which they named Fort 
Pitt in honor of William Pitt, the brilliant Brit- 

188 




YOUNG WASHINGTON'S WEDDING JOURNEY. 



George Wasliiiig'ton 

ish prime minister. After buiying the bones of 
the men who had been killed in the slaughter of 
Fort Duquesne, they marched back to Virginia 
in triumph. 

Within six weeks the brilliant wedding of the 
heroic commander-in-chief of Virginia and the 
wealthiest and most beautiful woman of the 
colony took place in the little English church 
near ''White House. '^ 

The bride was attired, with true Colonial ele- 
gance, in silk and satin, brocade and laces, with 
pearls at her neck and ears. The stately bride- 
groom appeared in blue and silver, trimmed with 
scarlet, and with gold buckles at his knees and on 
his shoes. 

After the ceremony the soldier bridegroom 
rode beside the bride's coach-and-six mounted 
on a splendid horse, and followed by the gentle- 
men of the wedding party. It was a happy 
home-coming to sightly Mount Vernon, with its 
stately elms and verandas overlooking the 
Potomac. 

Colonel Washington's days as a frontier 
fighter were over, and he was now settled among 
the Fairfaxes, Masons, Lees, Carys, and other 
congenial neighbors to live the easy comfortable 

189 



The Story of Young 

life of a Virginia planter, and he often went fox 
hunting mth his old friend, Lord Fairfax, and 
other lovers of the sport. 

How he was called away, after sixteen years 
of this happiness to endure eight years of 
struggle, privation, and sorrow is the subject of 
another story. 

Colonel Washington was at once elected to the 
Virginia House of Burgesses, the first repre- 
sentative law-making body in America. One of 
the first days of his attendance on that august 
assemblage, about three months after his mar- 
riage, Mr. Robinson, the Speaker of the House, 
thanked him eloquently for his signal services to 
his country. 

Washington rose to reply, but, unable to talk 
about himself, stood blushing and stammering, 
imtil the speaker came to his relief by saying : 

*'Sit down, Mr. Washington. Your modesty 
equals your valor, and that surpasses the powder 
of any language I possess. ' ' 

*'The Story of Young George Washington" is 
the account of the struggles and conflicts of a 
poor boy, the hope and support of his mdowed 
mother and younger brothers and sister. Even 
after he and his family were relieved of the 

190 



George Washington 

pressure of poverty he suffered many greater 
hardships and privations before the son of his 
friend, Richard Henry Lee (the "Dickey" of his 
boyhood days), could justly introduce in Con- 
gress the famous resolutions on the death of the 
Father of his Country in which was that im- 
mortal tribute : 

*^ First in war, first in peace, and first 
in the hearts of his countrymen.'' 



191 



APPENDIX 

What Became of George Washington's 
Brothers and Sister 



John Augustine was Washington's favorite 
brother. George often addressed him as "Dear 
brother Jack.'' He was named for his father 
and Colonel John, his great-grandfather, whose 
very name spread such terror among the Indians 
nearly a hundred years before George Washing- 
ton 's day. It was to this brother that General 
Washington's heart turned in many crises in his 
life. 

He wrote to "Jack" from Cambridge, Massa- 
chusetts, where he had just taken command of 
the Continental army, in 1775, telling him of the 
terrible discovery of their want of powder in his 
preparations to capture Boston, which was ac- 
complished on the 17th of the following March. 
It was to "Jack" that the General wrote from 
New York during the following summer, in 1776, 
after his visit to Philadelphia, when he, as a 

193 

ij — Washington, 



Appendix 

member of a secret committee, ordered the first 
Stars-and-Stripes made by Betsy Ross. The 
commander-in-chief returned to his army near 
New York City before the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence was passed and signed, in Independ- 
ence Hall, Philadelphia. The soldiers and peo- 
ple had a grand celebration when the news came 
to New York. 

*'We expect a bloody summer in New York 
and Canada," wrote Brother George to Brother 
Jacl:, after the General's return from Phila- 
del]:>hia, shortly before the plot to kidnap and 
kill the commander-in-chief was discovered. 
That was a summer and fall of defeats and re- 
treats for the ragged and starving American 
army. Worse than defeat was the treachery of 
Gen. Charles Lee, second in command, and the 
conspiracy against him of those who pretended 
to be his best friends. To ''Dear Jack" he wrote 
again after the turning of the tide of the Revo- 
lution, by his signal victory at Trenton, after 
the crossing of the Delaware, on Christmas 
night, 1776. 

Soon after the defeat of "the battle of the 
fog," at Germantown, October 4, 1777, the be- 
leaguered General wrote to Jack : 

194 



Appendix 

**Dear Brother: 

*'Your kind and affectionate letters 
of the 21st of September and 2d inst. 
came safe to hand. . . . The anxiety 
you have been under, on account of this 
army, I can easily conceive. Would to 
God there had been less cause for it ! 

^*. . . But for a thick fog, which 
rendered it so infinitely dark at times as 
not to distinguish friend from foe at 
the distance of thirty yards, we should, 
I believe, have made a decisive and 
glorious day of it. But Providence, or 
some unaccountable something, de- 
signed it otherwise; for after we had 
driven the enemy a mile or two, after 
they were in the utmost confusion and 
flying before us in most places, after we 
were upon the point (as it appeared to 
everybody) of grasping a complete vic- 
tory, our own troops took fright and 
fled \\T.th precipitation and disorder. 
How to account for this I know not ; un- 
less, as I before observed, the fog repre- 
sented their friends to them for a rein- 
forcement of the enemy.*' 

Washington added a postscript to this letter, 
telling the ''important and glorious news'' of 

195 



Appendix 

the surrender of Burgoyne, and closed with 
these words : 

^'I most devoutly congratulate you, 
my country and every well wisher to 
the cause, on this signal stroke of Provi- 
dence. Yrs. as before, ' ' 

[Geoege.] 

Of course, the General wrote to *'Dear Jack" 
many times during the '4ong and dreary win- 
ter" at Valley Forge, and the following season, 
even worse for hardships, at Morristown, New 
Jersey, and while he kept watch upon the Brit- 
ish in New York, others were carrying on the 
war in the South. At last, after long watching 
his chance, he broke away ^Ho catch Cornwallis 
in his mousetrap," at Yorktown, Virginia, 
storming that commander in his stronghold. 
Cornwallis 's surrender, in October, 1781, prac- 
tically ended the war. 

When George Washington's old friend, Lord 
Fairfax, heard that the British commander had 
surrendered to his young hunting companion of 
earlier days, the old nobleman called to his col- 
ored body-servant, *'Come, Joe, carry me to bed, 
for it is high time for me to die" — for the Fair- 

196 



Appendix 

faxes and many others of Washington's friends 
believed it very wrong to fight against the King 
of England. 

It may be well to relate here what became of 
Washington's brothers, sister and other rela- 
tives of himself and of his wife. The first thing 
the victorious commander did after the sur- 
render of Cornwallis was to proceed to Eltham, 
Virginia, where his stepson, Jack Custis, lay 
dying. Beside that deathbed General Washing- 
ton adopted Custis 's two children, Eleanor, or 
Nelly, and George Washington Parke Custis, 
who wrote many valuable memories of his foster 
father. Nelly Custis was married to Washing- 
ton's sister Betty's son, at Mount Vernon, on 
Washington's last birthday. 

There was a strong bond of sympathy between 
Washington and his only sister, Betty. (Baby 
Mildred had died while George was still a boy.) 
Betty was very tall and large, and when she put 
on a military cloak and hat she was said to re- 
semble her illustrious brother, the General. She 
was married to Colonel Fielding Lewis, and 
lived in ^'Kenmore House," a fine estate on the 
Rappahannock, where George visited her and 
his mother, for whom he purchased a home in 

197 



Appendix 

the town near the home of her only daughter, 
Betty. Mary Washington clung to Fredericks- 
burg and its surroundings, the scenes of her 
early widowhood and struggles to bring up a 
large family on a small income. Washington 
once wrote to his mother : 

*^My house is at your service, and I would 
most sincerely and most devoutly press you to 
accept it, but I am sure, and candor requires me 
to say, it will never answer your purposes in any 
shape whatsoever. For in truth it may be com- 
pared to a well-resorted tavern, as scarcely any 
strangers who are going from north to south, or 
from south to north, do not spend a day or two 
at it." 

George, always a dutiful son, wrote to his 
mother in the stilted form of that time as 
* ' Honour 'd Madam. ' ' He provided liberally for 
her needs, and when he was long absent from 
home, as he was during the eight years of the 
Revolution, he directed his overseer of Mount 
Vernon to look well to his mother's comfort. 
Besides presenting her with a fine house and 
farm he gave her a phaeton, in which the old lady 
drove about managing her estate as long as she 
was able. She was a strong, unyielding woman, 

198 



Appendix 

ruling every one with a rod of iron. When Gen- 
eral Washington, on his way from the surrender 
of Yorktown, came to Fredericksburg to see his 
aged mother, he stopped at a tavern to learn if 
she were able to welcome him to her home. When 
Mary Washington heard of this, she gave the 
following command: ''Tell George to come here 
instantly!" And George came at once. 

She was ill of a cancer when he was elected 
President. He bade her good-bye, after an af- 
fecting scene, when on his way to New York for 
the first inauguration. Mother and son never 
saw each other again on earth, for she died dur- 
ing a long and critical illness which came upon 
him during his first year as President. Wash- 
ington was well on the road to recovery before 
they could tell him of his mother's death. 

John Augustine Washington — "Brother 
Jack" — lived until 1787, two years before his 
brother's first election to the presidency. Wash- 
ington wrote, in deep grief, of the death of "my 
beloved brother." John left a son, Bushrod, 
who became the President's favorite nephew. 
Bushrod Washington was a successful lawyer 
and judge, being associated both in business and 
in friendship with Judge John Marshall, who 

199 



Appendix 

became Chief Justice of the United States. 

Little is known of Charles, Washington's 
youngest brother. He died but a short time be- 
fore George himself. The distinguished uncle 
provided well for Charles's children. 

Too much, perhaps, is known of Samuel, 
George's brother nearest his own age. He was 
a ne'er-do-well, and gave the General and Presi- 
dent Washington no end of trouble. Samuel 
was married five times, and each succeeding wife 
seemed only to drive him deeper into debt. He 
must have been extravagant himself, for Wash- 
ington once wrote to John: "In God's name, 
how did my brother Samuel get himself so enor- 
mously into debt?" 

Samuel knew the kindness of his wealthy 
elder brother's heart, and made frequent re- 
quests for loans. Though sometimes it was 
*Very inconvenient" to do so, he furnished 
Samuel with thousands of dollars, a debt which 
George canceled in his will. Samuel's son, 
Thornton, follow^ed in his father's footsteps, and 
two other sons of Samuel were a big "bill of ex- 
pense" to their "Uncle George," for their col- 
lege course cost him "near five thousand dol- 
lars" — a large sum for those days. 

200 



Appendix 

Samuel's daughter Harriot seems to have 
given her uncle more annoyance than real 
anxiety. She lived with her Aunt Betty part of 
the time, and sometimes with her Uncle George 
at Mount Yernon. Mrs. Lewis wrote her brother, 
in 1793, that Harriot was in want of ''shoes, 
gloves, and a hat." Washington himself refers 
to Harriot's carelessness. *'She has no disposi- 
tion to be careful of her clothes, for they are 
dabbed about in every hole and corner, and her 
best things alwaj^s in use." He once said of 
Harriot, with a smile and a shrug, ''She costs 
me enough!" 

She once wrote to wheedle her indulgent uncle 
into sending her more money: "How shall I 
apologize to my dear and Honored for intrud- 
ing on his goodness so soon again, but being 
sensible for your kindness to me, which I shall 
ever remember with the most heartfelt gratitude 
induces me to make known my wants. I have 
not had a pair of stays since I first came here; 
if you could let me have a pair I should be very 
much obliged to you, and also a hat and a few 
other articles. I hope my dear uncle will not 
think me extravagant, for really I take as much 
care of my clothes as I possibly can." 

201 



Appendix 

It does not suit our sense of the proprieties to 
think of a niece of the Father of his Country 
coaxing him for corsets (''if you could let me 
have a pair!"), but Washington had to give 
patient attention to the most irksome details of 
life. 

Sister Betty appears to bear Harriot out in 
her claim as to her care of her clothes, for she 
wrote to her brother, in 1793, *' Harriot pays 
strict regard to my advice and is ingenious in 
making her clothes." 

In 1796 Betty wrote to her brother : 

''I believe Harriot is distressed to know how 
she is to be provided with things for a wedding 
dress." This was probably Sister Betty's last 
letter to her beloved and loving brother, for she 
died soon afterward. 

Another nephew, Lund Washington, was left 
in charge of Mount Vernon all through the War 
of the Revolution. The most important letter 
preserved that his uncle wrote to him was after 
the British sailed up the Potomac, pillaging and 
burning the estates of the wealthy planters. 
Lund, naturally anxious to save his imcle's 
estate if possible, received the invaders hospit- 
ably, gave them refreshments and treated them 

202 



Appendix 

so well that they made an exception of Mount 
Vernon, passing it by unharmed. Washington 
wrote very severely to his well-meaning nephew : 

*'It would have been a less painful 
circumstance to me to have heard that, 
in consequence of your non-compliance 
with their request, they had burnt my 
house and laid the plantation in ruins. 
You ought to have considered yourself 
as my representative, and should have 
reflected on the bad example of com- 
municating with the enemy, and mak- 
ing a voluntary offer of refreshments 
to them, with a view to prevent a con- 
flagration." 

How much such a voluntary sacrifice must 
have meant to the master of Mount Vernon may 
be understood by turning back to the happy days 
he spent as a young married man, a Virginia 
planter, on the estate left to him through the 
wills of his father and brother, Lawrence. 



THE END 



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